


Ode To Apollo 13

by cerebella



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-09-24 16:21:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 66,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9770138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerebella/pseuds/cerebella
Summary: Yuuri Katsuki has his first and only breakup, and reacts the only way he knows how: board a starship and live out the rest of his life in outer space. It doesn't work.





	1. Chapter 1

472183.89 — _present day_

For Yuuri Katsuki, who grew up toddling mindlessly in a Japanese town by the sea, it's heartbreaking to watch his home planet fade into obscurity while he sits in the observatory aboard the _S.S. Cupid_ as it jettisons down intergalactic highways. Travelling at this speed, and with his eyesight—maimed by years of extensive microgravity training—it's impossible to make out anything other than a nauseating dilemma of colorless space and pinpricks of light. He is decidedly not envious of the stellar cartographers whose duty it is to try and illustrate navigable maps of constellations whilst the ship is spinning and soaring at astronomical speeds. 

He's alone in the observatory on a sleepless night,  _again_ , and most operations are down while the rest of the crew are sleeping or making excuses to linger in the mess hall. Yuuri glances down at the data pad in his lap, and plays an old transmission sent by his mother, the last one he was ever able to salvage after takeoff. It's full of static, but the enduring softness is still there: she's alone, sitting outside in a well-lit den of cherry blossom trees. He knows that at the time of recording, both his father and Mari were almost certainly still around—otherwise she certainly wouldn't be so peaceful—but in all the other video messages, he could make out customers in the background, or the din of the TV, or Vicchan making some kind of commotion. His heart gives a pang at the uncommon sight of her completely alone.

" _…making us proud, Yuuri, but you've gotten so far away from us! And I still remember when you could barely get up the stairs to your own room…_ "

It's impossible, Yuuri knows, for her to talk about Yuuri's prestigious position without reminiscing about the times when he was a soft and squishy toddler, wearing knitted sweaters with his own initials proudly printed on them. She chatters more about how he's eating, is he ever getting sick, ' _Are you making friends? Of course you are, everyone likes you…_ '

He can faintly hear birds twittering and the hum of cicadas, and he's tempted to record those few seconds devoid of his mother's fretting, and play them over and over again at night before he goes to sleep.

It gets more and more difficult to make out what she's saying, but she does eventually stop giggling and her smile fades from brilliance to resigned sadness. Yuuri is half-glad that it was always impossible to get a message back to her after the ship set off on its maiden voyage. He wouldn't know what to say; he'd probably start crying and have to start all over again and at some point Minami would come in and start making pterodactyl screeching noises at the sight of him sobbing in their shared bunk. There is nothing more he wants to say to his mother than ' _Yes, I eat leafy greens and people do like me, the vice captain fondles me all the time, but I miss you too and I'm sorry I got into this line of work without realizing one day I'd never see you again—_ '

She stops talking, sighs, cradles her own cheek, and at the end of the day they're not face to face and maybe she feels ridiculous pouring her heart out into a tiny screen and hoping to god that some of it will get through, even though she knows there won't be any response. The transmission ends and the screen fades to black, leaving Yuuri in complete darkness, save for the faint starlight beaming down through the dome of the observatory.

He is acutely aware of the fact that Christophe Giacometti is probably being forced to watch this embarrassing and sentimental spectacle on security tapes, and not for the first time. This is more of a go-to-sleep call than anything else, his circadian rhythm included, so Yuuri ends up walking quietly back to his cabin. He's struck with guilt when he realizes he'll end up waking Minami, but is affronted to find that instead Minami is passed out on their shared desk and drooling all over Yuuri's new reports. 

"Minami!" Yuuri hisses under his breath. He pats Minami's shoulders, and ends up jostling him awake. "You can sleep in my bunk if you get up right now," Yuuri bribes. Which is enough, although Minami seems to think that Yuuri is going to share the bunk with him, at which Yuuri snorts and flicks his ear before clambering into the top bunk. In the darkness of their shared cabin, illuminated only faintly by Minami's soft blue night light, Yuuri can faintly make out the polaroids and well-loved posters taped to the wall of Minami's bunk. He doesn't have to inspect them closely to know that there's a plentitude of cheerful selfies Minami took of the both of them; dressed in scrubs, eating breakfast, or belting out karaoke in Japanese on the entertainment deck.

Yuuri's own bunk is much more sparsely decorated. There's a picture of him and Mari, aged twelve and nineteen respectively, licking away contentedly at yakult ice pops, perched on the steps leading to an old dance studio. A candid of his mother as she tends to a potted bonsai—bathed in golden-syrup light, dust motes floating—taken by Yuuri's father shortly after his parents' honeymoon. The questionable posters he keeps of good-looking actors from cheesy soap operas are confined to the dark recesses of his personal locker, safe from prying eyes. Unlike some people—young, boisterous med students with whom he shares his cabin—Yuuri is a mature and sagacious adult who wanders off to various locations on the ship without clearance to cry by himself when he feels homesick at four in the morning. 

So he doesn't need many photographs.

Minami, who is generally a nuisance and only lives to shame Yuuri (albeit always by accident), asks—"Were you watching your mom's messages again?"

"Go to sleep," Yuuri grumbles.

"I wish I had someone looking after me like that." Minami yawns, and Yuuri knows he's stretching his limbs out because he can hear him bang his foot against the bunk and good _lord_ , Yuuri thinks Minami has grown ten extra inches since he turned eighteen and Minami's not even slightly used to it yet. "Like, eat all your vegetables and go to bed early and stuff…"

"I tell you those things every single day and you don't even listen. I'm telling you right now."

"Ohhh, Nurse Katsuki really does care…" Minami laughs quiet and playful, the dregs of late-night exhaustion catching up to him.

Yuuri does not say good night, but does resolve to force extra bok choy on Minami's plate tomorrow morning, safe in the knowledge that Minami will be equal parts delighted and indignant. He doesn't have the heart to tell Minami that there is nobody looking after Yuuri, really, and that nobody on the _S.S. Cupid_ is being looked after very well at all: not while they're still so far from any kind of home. Yuuri Katsuki, for the most part, is friendless, lonely, and has spent the last six years of his life on a one-way ticket into unchartered oblivion, travelling millions of miles further away from his home with every passing hour. He is sure that the best years of his life are far behind him.

 

*

 

472975.73 —  _six years ago_

Yuuri can't remember how it is exactly they meet for the first time, just that one day he woke up and he was no longer plagued by this feeling of pathetic loneliness; instead he was being followed around by his seemingly angelic classmate who mysteriously knew Yuuri's name, and even more mysteriously, appeared to like him. Yuuri has no idea why Victor Nikiforov, self-appointed gift from God, hangs out with him. Yuuri is infinitely glad anyway. His studies are grueling, his training even more so. He's grateful that he can avoid skipping meal times because Victor is always there to wave him over and shuffle up to make a space for him in the mess hall, even if it does make him feel a little bit like a charity case.

During training, they run laps together under the midsummer sun and although this does wonders for Yuuri's fitness (he's too embarrassed to ever just _give up_ in front of Victor) it's difficult for Victor to ever improve his time. He paces alongside Yuuri, cheerful and pleasantly flushed, while Yuuri dry heaves and tries not to vomit all over the track. They always finish last, usually a couple of minutes after everyone has completed their laps. Victor isn't embarrassed, and has no reason to be: _he's_ obviously just pandering to Yuuri because Victor feels bad for him. Yuuri is genuinely lackluster, and has a hard time looking anyone in the eye for a few hours afterwards.

(Later, Yuuri will find himself missing the feeling of cool sweat dripping down the shallow slope of his spine, and breaking into a sprint down the track with just fifty meters left before he finishes. He never seems to tire of watching Victor peel off his sweaty t-shirt in the changing rooms, before Victor catches him and Yuuri looks away, knowing anyway that Victor is grinning at him all too knowingly.)

It's better during their free hours when they're both studying in the library; or, that is, Yuuri is leafing through workbooks and Victor is folding crooked paper swans at his own leisure. Yuuri wants to specialize in bioengineering. At this rate he'll be lucky if he ends up a chicken soup machine operative on a flimsy mining ship. He pokes Victor in the leg with a pen: _defeat the menace!_ Victor does not move his legs, but does yowl in mock agony, a half-formed paper crane flopping to the floor. The librarian gives them scathing looks which neither of them ever see, because Yuuri is hiding his face in his hands and Victor is snapping pictures of Yuuri's shame with his phone.

They aren't _roommates—_ God would never be so kind, but it's a very near thing—Yuuri's roommate is a cryptid, and Victor claims his roommate is the devil incarnate. Victor spends the night in Yuuri's room more often than not, lounging airily in the bathtub with bubbles on his chin or sprawled out on a spare mattress on the floor. Yuuri paints Victor's nails cherry red, brushes his hair, and rubs his neck and shoulders the way Yuuri's mother taught him. He asks if it hurts, just to hear Victor sigh sweetly and say ' _no, you're too good at this._ ' He practically waits on Victor hand and foot, from the moment he walks through the door to when he falls asleep with his head pillowed in Yuuri's lap. The sight of Victor bathed in moonlight, content and sleepy and demure, is too good to resist. Yuuri is surely sick and his heart is covetous.

It's even better, after their shared flight engineering classes, when Victor drives them through oddly out-of-place sunflower fields and orders late breakfasts of triple pancake stacks, pineapple juice, and pink wet rinds of watermelon at an old dusty diner, fifteen miles off campus. Here the vintage seats are all cracked red leather, soft beneath your fingertips, and old rock'n'roll songs crackle through the floor speakers. Victor pretends like he isn't rubbing their bare ankles together under the table in hopes that one day he'll be caught red-handed, and Yuuri tries to hide his blush behind a battered menu, twelve minutes after their food has already arrived. He stares out the window, and thinks that it's been a good, long while since he felt so warm inside, and he doesn't think he's ever been this sweet on someone in his whole life.

"Why are you hiding from me this time?"

Yuuri peeks over the top of his menu to see Victor pouting, cheeks comically stuffed with hotcakes and golden syrup.

"You're so… _gross_ ," Yuuri grumbles. Victor's face falls, and he gives Yuuri a kick under the table.

" _Yuuri!_ " Victor wails, feigning a broken heart, but he's laughing and he has a face like a cherry cake, and at some point he started running his foot up Yuuri's exposed calf, and this is _just_ what Yuuri gets for thinking he could get away with wearing his running shorts to their date-which-is-not-a-date, but simply a meal for two on the edge of a no gas station town.

Yuuri foots the bill per Victor's demand, and on the drive home, Victor is looking over at Yuuri every time Yuuri is looking over at him.

It's been months since Yuuri has shied away from any of Victor's touches (of which there are many, and at the same time not nearly enough) and Yuuri is beginning to wonder. Reaching out to hold his hand right now would probably be a safety hazard, and they've held hands before during microgravity training, so it'd hardly be a game-changer now.

They could just be friends, until the end of time or until one of them graduates, depending on their specializations, unless Yuuri leaned over and just _kissed_ him—it's all he could ever ask for, given that Victor's well-liked by everyone and he's funny and genial and _oh_ , so pretty.

"What are you thinking about?" Victor asks. The roof is down on Victor's car, and Victor's long hair flutters behind him, coming loose where Victor keeps trying to tuck it behind his ear.

"Nothing, just…are you going to stay in my room tonight?"

"My roommate is out of town, so you could sleep over." Victor pauses, mouth curling into a smile. "We can stay up past bedtime and talk about boys."

"I don't like any boys." Yuuri curls in on himself like he's guilty, staring resolutely at the sunflower fields that are passing them by in a blur of yellow under a hot blue sky.

"I think you do," Victor says; like he knows. Like he just _knows_ that Yuuri wants him to pull over onto the side of the freeway so Yuuri can unbuckle his seatbelt and blow him—scratch that, Victor wouldn't even have to stop the car, he'd only have to ask. Yuuri doesn't want to look at Victor when he's smiling smugly behind his pale sunglasses. Yuuri wants to kiss him senseless on the hood of his car, then get off together in the backseat until they're sticky and sunburnt from lying in the sun for too long. He chews his lower lip and turns on the radio for something to fill the silence that ensues when Yuuri is busy being too virginal to proposition his best friend.

 

Yuuri thinks, hopes, that the song blares loud enough to mask the sound of his shuddered breaths. He rubs his eyes, squinting when the fuzzy image of their ditzy college town comes into view. Tipping his head back, his gaze catches on chrome cityscapes in the faraway distance, and glinting starships humming overhead.

Victor has always wanted to be a pilot: Yuuri knows he'd be wonderful. If he ends up sleeping in Victor's room tonight (and he _will_ ) he'll make Victor promise to take him on a joyride beyond the atmosphere, even if it's just once. He's come so far, and now he wants to see the stars, wants to get closer than he's ever gotten before. Somehow, Yuuri knows they'll both get there in the end, at their own pace.

He leans back, closes his eyes, the late-afternoon sun warming his cheeks and the dry wind tousling his hair. _Just five more minutes._ He wants it like this forever: to be young and hopeful, and getting very close to exactly what he wants. But he tells himself that five more minutes will be enough.

 

* 

 

472983.36 — _present day_

In forty-eight hours, the _S.S. Cupid_ will make a stopover at an extrasolar colony to refill emergency fuel reserves, perform extravehicular maintenance, and stock up on vegetable curry. The crew will be given temporary leave while _Cupid_ docks, and most of the ship is anticipating the brief respite from ship life.

Otabek Altin, chief medical officer aboard the ship and Yuuri's long-standing colleague, has been invited to the pre-landing conference, which means Yuuri's going too as his plus one. Each member of the crew has the right to submit a request for supplies which are running low or not provided on the ship; while Barovskaya is still captain, it is assured that none of these requests are ever going to get through. The pre-conference meetings are different though, since Lilia is not immune without her secretaries to act as her line of defense. And to Yuuri's merit, the vice captain of _Cupid_ has always been sweet on him.

(It remains a source of mystery to the crew why Lilia ever selected Christophe Giacometti as her vice captain. He's frisky, errant, without much love for discipline, and doesn't really function as a sentient creature should before the hours of nine in the morning. At the same time, Chris's aptitude tests have consistently been marvellous, going back many years, so it's not like he isn't qualified.)

Otabek is a good deal more standoffish than even Yuuri at these meetings, though his friendlessness is better attributed to his lack of approachability. Yuuri's trained under Otabek since he was nineteen, and shadowed him obediently for months when he was still a bumbling med student wracked constantly by hospital-acquired fever. After six years, he's finally earned Otabek's respect, though he still suspects Otabek would sling Yuuri over his knee if he so much as left a used needle lying around. Yuuri prides himself on the fact that he remains the only medical officer onboard who can have a ten-minute-long conversation with Otabek without breaking into hives.

Otabek's lone wolf stature suits Yuuri just fine: at the meeting, he plans to make a play for the implementation of a new Veggie system on the engineering deck. Otabek's given him the all-clear. As it currently stands, the _Cupid's_ botanical gardens are far from state-of-the-art. Yuuri would go so far as to say that they don't exist. Instead anyone can take a gander at the underwhelming tubs of dirt that have been left to their own devices, probably breeding pathogens in a dimly-lit chamber set apart from the rest of deck five.

But what's first on Yuuri's agenda today is meeting with Isabella Yang, a high-ranking flight commander who, given the option, would probably not ever spare Yuuri a second glance.

"She tested positive for pregnancy, and the captain doesn't know yet." Yuuri furrows his brows. "I think," he amends.

Otabek crosses his legs in his office chair, and uncrosses them again, a telltale sign that they're in an uncommon situation where Otabek isn't quite sure what to do. "It wouldn't be impossible for her to raise the child on the ship for a little while, even if Lilia would hate it."

Yuuri shuffles his papers in his lap. The thought of having such a young child onboard makes his heart shiver with the strangeness of it. "If we tell Lilia now, before the stopover, she'll terminate Isabella's contract and kick her off the ship. And Isabella still doesn't know what she wants."

Otabek furrows his brows. "Talk her through her options. And keep this classified from the captain for as long as you can. We don't have to tell her if she doesn't ask. In the meantime, tell J.J. he's on a new health regime."

Yuuri blinks in confusion. "As punishment?"

Otabek fixes with him a _look_. "No. I want to see both of them in good shape if they're going through with this."

 _Oh_. Yuuri nods. He has a feeling like Otabek already knows what's going to happen.

 

*

 

Yuuri, Otabek, Chris, and everyone else who was present at the pre-landing conference take an early shuttle down to Isonoe. Lilia is loath to leave Cupid without so many of its leading officers to help man the ship, but there's only so much wreckage that could possibly take place in eighteen hours.

Yuuri is aware that Chris was born on Isonoe, a warm and sunny asteroid, where the sugary precipitation has birthed a profusion of sweet-smelling flora. When they land, Yuuri is immediately taken by the rose mallows and peach flowers that have bloomed on the lapels of every building in sight. Otabek is not so easily swindled by the powdery sand underfoot—Yuuri coos for a solid minute after slipping off his shoes at Chris's insistence—which is good,because someone needs to navigate their trio while Yuuri and Chris delight in the omnipresent ringing of wedding bells, and the flocks of doves that burst into the atmosphere like uncorked bottles of fizzy champagne.

They have time to wander and look around, and Chris promptly hooks his arm in Yuuri's while they amble pointlessly around. They're both impatient to fill their lungs with non-recycled air: even the atmosphere—warm, clear, pure—has a fruity, saccharine note to it, like the whole planetoid has been sprayed with perfume. It's enough to make Yuuri heady while Otabek trails behind them, seeming somewhat bemused. Yuuri's barely holding onto his state of mind when he sees a baby boutique, and drags Chris in behind him.

Chris seems momentarily put-off when Yuuri starts loading a basket with reusable diapers, baby bottles, and a pink pacifier hand-painted with tulips.

("Do you think I'm coming off too strong?" Chris murmurs to Otabek, while Yuuri is inspecting baby clothes and toy rattles.

"He doesn't want your children yet, if that's what you're asking."

"Oh. Good. I'd hate to have to break it to him that neither of us have the right equipment." Chris dusts off his hands, and resumes holding Yuuri's henceforth.)

When they duck out of the store, Yuuri is beginning to shine with sweat. Isonoe is so _warm_. Chris is so _close_. Otabek offers to carry Yuuri's bags for him and it takes some internal reminding on Yuuri's part that not every kind gesture is a come-on, but he's blushing anyway as he hands over his purchases.

Yuuri also buys a new rice cooker for his cabin that Minami will love because it's painted with kumquats and monarch butterflies, and some seeds that he'll need if he ever wants to make his veggie project happen. They stumble upon a café with just a couple hours left before they need to start making their way back to the shuttle. Otabek does not have the outwards appearance of someone who seems annoyed or perturbed by the fact that Chris is sidled up to Yuuri and borderline cuddling him in their booth with plenty of space on either side of them.

"What is it about this place?" Yuuri asks with his chin resting on his hand, staring at the palm trees outside that sway like they're trying to hypnotize him.

"Pheromones," Otabek answers nonchalantly, flipping through a menu. Yuuri doesn't hear him over the sweet nothings that Chris is whispering in his ear and the sound of his own laughter.

"You know Yuuri, I think we were made for each other," Christophe says in as serious a tone he can muster.

"I've always thought that! When are you going to marry me?" Yuuri squints down at his menu. He doesn't know where his glasses went. He's not sure if he can read the language printed on the menu. This is absolutely fine: he'll marry Chris and stay in his captain quarters all day, dressed in silk robes and living off of strawberries and cream. He'll never have to read again. Minami will probably die without him. That is also fine.

 

*

 

When they re-board the shuttle to Cupid, Yuuri finds himself nauseous and not nearly as infatuated with his vice captain as he was five minutes ago. He's disgruntled when he realizes the extent to which his hormones are in flux, and the wine-soaked pomegranate medley churning in his stomach isn't helping anything. He also realizes, belatedly, that Chris is either immune to Isonoe's pheromones (thanks to his upbringing there) or Chris is just like that all of the time. Chris claims it's not his fault he was the lovechild of a sweet and scandalous escapade and Yuuri gives him a withering look. Otabek took pheromone inhibitors beforehand; Yuuri cannot look him in the eye after having just submitted him to five hours of public indecency and an impromptu marriage proposal. 

He tries to sleep off the hormonal imbalance, and wakes up with morning wood, which is blatantly obvious through his skintight EVA suit. So there's that.

  
There's also the matter of the list of new recruits that Otabek has just handed to him.

Cupid has released an odd dozen crew members, as it tends to do whenever there's a stopover, since long periods of time can pass without the ship ever making a stop. Some recruits come to the end of their contract organically, or are informed by Baranovskaya that those contracts have been terminated due to insolence. Cupid then picks up new hires, fresh faces, to pick up the slack, and some of those recruits are sent Yuuri's way to be cleared for duty.

To his unconcealed delight, one of them is a qualified midwife.

To his mild horror, one of them is Victor Nikiforov.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can you believe that in this fic, tagged victor/yuuri, yuuri does actually end up meeting victor? groundbreaking
> 
> a few things about this universe: the stardates, lifted from star trek, do not actually represent any kind of date. the AU ostensibly does take place in the shiny future where faster-than-light travel is possible but i did try to account for some technical aspects like gravity. i didn't realize gravity nets were a thing, because they're not, so suppose that the s.s. cupid is like a stack of bagels, each bagel a deck with its own purpose, with the 'bagel hole' being a series of elevators used to traverse the ship. gravity is simulated by the ship's rotation creating a centrifugal force grounding its inhabitants to the walls of the ship and, wow, is all of this scientifically accurate? god no. it's horrendous
> 
> thank you for reading and thank you alu for cheerleading me!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for clarity, larissa is the name of the artificial intelligence system built into the S.S. cupid, similar to holly from red dwarf

328718.67 — _present day_

The recruits get time to settle in before their medical examinations, so Yuuri resigns himself to some long-overdue spring cleaning in his cabin. Even after vacuuming and laundry, Minami tells him he smells like a honeymoon—whatever that means—so Yuuri ends up in the communal showers, trying to get away from himself.

He wishes he was sore but he's not. He wishes he was tired but he's not. Instead his mind is racing and he can hardly keep track of his own thoughts: he tries to think about tomorrow's bloodwork, house calls, his vegetable project, all the reusable diapers he bought, Victor Nikiforov's medical file, which—God, what if he's _married?_ Victor could have _kids_ already. That his college ex probably hasn't spent his entire adult life simply suffering the regrets of the past makes Yuuri flush with stormy indignation.

He steps out of the shower and pinches his waist. Is he dreaming? No. Has he gained weight? _It's because it's night time_ , he tells himself, and then, _It's been night time for eight months because that's how long it's been since you've seen a sun_. Maybe he wouldn't be gaining weight if he was _sleeping with Chris!_ Yuuri scowls at himself in the mirror, blows a raspberry to allay his self-derision, towels his hair and does not head up to deck eight to make improper suggestions to his vice captain. If he concentrates very hard, and makes all the right mental turns, he knows he will find a way to blame this on Minami.

*

Victor's contract with Lux Aeterna ends on a dull and placid note. What little he had saved up after his years with Lux he just spent on a black coffee and a bowl of dry cereal. (He supposes, afterwards, that he could have just smashed the food dispenser open, since obviously nobody cares what's happening on this lonely asteroid.)

After his contract had been terminated, he'd spent three months still aboard his main vessel, but hadn't bothered to renew his contract. What a shame, too—he'd never been uptight enough, could have been a commander, maybe, with the chest candy and everything—only he's not. He's jobless. He's sitting on a rock so small that the atmosphere begins at his feet and ends at his ankles. His supervisor had frowned when Victor had said ' _Yes, here is fine, you can just drop me off in the middle of nowhere_ ' as if he'd known what Victor had really wanted to say was, ' _Between spending more time with you on this ship and being left deserted on this desolate rock I think I'd rather just get stabbed but the rock it is_.'

The extent of Lux's niceties after his years of unwavering servitude (i.e. occasional compliance) had been to cut out some job offerings and tack them to his forehead. In the last months he spent aboard Lux without any duties, he'd been mostly living out of his jet since Lux was on a military operation, and it was bothering the higher-ups that Victor was still hanging around. Had they not been able to pile him into his jet, Victor is convinced Lux would've had some muscly buffoon shove him into a locker—or possibly an engine furnace if Victor hadn't made it to an escape pod first. His old co-pilots had occasionally stopped by to drop off the soggiest leftovers they could scrape together for their own sadistic amusement, and that had been the full extent of the tender love and care he'd been on the receiving end of for three months. Such was the unglamorous end of his glamorous career.

He sits in a diner booth in his EVA suit, the last of his oxygen draining away at a rate that should alarm him. It's disconcerting to him that a station exists on a rock so distant from Earth, and yet it so closely resembles any gas station one might find unloved and abandoned in, say, rural Alabama.  In front of him is an array of contracts he could try to sign off on. Most of them are not truly suited to his tastes—transporting cargo is mind-numbingly dull at best and each time in the past that he's tried to put up with the boredom, he's ended up gallivanting off into the sunset still with precious cargo in tow.

Now that he thinks about it, those penalties are probably what have left him in this situation in the first place; forced to find work, and not sipping girly drinks at the edge of a pool on Callisto, which was what he planned on doing at this age.

He has a soft spot for research vehicles; there's only one such contract available to him, and he's lucky it exists at all. These ships are mammoth beasts, renowned for their state-of-the-art technology and grand, sweeping architecture.

The more he looks at this contract, the more of a godsend it appears to be.

Mysterious old research facility it is, then. Outside this dinky little station—which is starting to haunt Victor with how quiet, grey, and untouched it all is, like he's fallen into an old post-war photograph— _Lutetia_ waits patiently outside for him, her engines cool and her custom paint job cooler. He'll be a little late to board in time for the contract, and when he inevitably crashes off the caffeine and passes out at the main console, he'll have to cut the engines completely, since _Lutetia_ was never fitted with any kind of autopilot simulation. That's fine; it'll make for an interesting ride.

He brings what's left of his coffee back to _Lutetia_ and sighs a breath of relief when the mini console on his wrist indicates that his EVA suit is finally re-absorbing oxygen after having spent two nightmarishly dull days on this lifeless pebble. He found out the hard way that oxygen deprivation was bad for his complexion. Filtered air floods him like a cane sugar sweet coolant as _Lutetia_ begins to warm up; systems liquefying, rudders orientating, one and only pilot preening in the rearview mirror.

Unlike the external hull—smooth, polished, without a single scratch— _Lutetia's_ interior is dimly-lit and disorderly. He's been cycling through the same four pairs of underwear, with his only means of washing being the Lux communal showers (from which he is now outlawed, so they'd only been an option at four in the morning) and his dwindling supply of dry shampoo. Laying neglected on the floor, which is not so much a floor as it is a squalid petri dish: the last of his pink guava hydrating lip masks, a variety of nail clippers and files, not nearly enough teeth whitening strips, and someone's rhinestone-spangled leather jacket (which they are never, _ever_ getting back). Also, his dog, asleep and indulgent as ever (who does she get that from?) who is simultaneously the light of his life, and also the bane of his existence because she got Victor fired just by  _existing_.

Makkachin deserves better than Victor's bachelor-pad-with-wings, garden of filth and indecency that it is, which is another reason he's tacking the IRV contract onto his least glittery pin-up poster.

It's time to get a move on! It's time to ride off into the sunset, again! He's a space cowboy with places to meet and people to do and things to go—Clint Eastwood will never have anything on Victor Nikiforov as long as Clint Eastwood doesn't have his own _jet_.

*

Yuuri struggles to keep his composure as new recruits filter through his office, day in and day out. It's been a week since he received the list of crew members coming aboard, and now most of them have been cleared for duty, but there's still no sign of Victor.

He's distracted at breakfast, staring down at the unpeeled mandarins that occupy his plate with a blank expression on his face, while Minami is spooning honey over the banana chunks in his yoghurt. Otabek makes an uncommon appearance in the mess hall that morning, but mostly all he does is watch disapprovingly as Minami sweetens his plate. Chris is sitting with them too, and is shooting Yuuri increasingly concerned looks which he knows Yuuri can see.

Naturally Chris corners him in the medbay just after Yuuri has cleared a newly-arrived technician. "What's bothering you, _petit chou?_ " Chris tips Yuuri's chin up, brows furrowed. Yuuri wrinkles his nose and clutches his clipboard tighter to his chest, so coy he might as well toss his scrubs for eternity and instead strut around the ship in a sexy nurse halloween costume complete with knee stockings and kitten heels. "You looked so sad this morning I thought I might have to spoonfeed you."

God save him. These are not the words Yuuri wants to hear from Chris, or from anyone, ever.

"Um," he says, intelligently. "…The new recruits—"

"—Is one of them bothering you?" Chris straightens and his hands are at his sides in closed fists immediately, which is a very dramatic and—Yuuri thinks—unnecessary display, considering they're both just standing in an empty room. Yuuri shifts from foot to foot, looking longingly at the emergency exit. "Give me the word, Nurse Katsuki, they'll soon be floating in a vacuum."

Yuuri does not know what that word is so hopefully he'll never say it in front of Chris and everything will be fine and none of the new recruits will perish in deep space. "No, Captain, it's fine." Yuuri smiles nervously up at him. Where is Otabek? "I'm just stressed." Where is the _entire medical department_ and why has nobody come to rescue him from Christophe's inanity?

Chris makes a noise like he's pondering something very deeply. Then, breaking into a smile—"If you're stressed, you know I could always give you a massage."

Yuuri thinks ' _God yes that sounds amazing_ ' at the same time he says, "No thank you Chris, I'm sorry there's just no time goodbye!" And then he scampers off instead of asking Chris to _leave_ because this is where he works. But there are no more crew members who need screening or medical examining today, so Yuuri's work can be considered done, and he can spend the rest of the day helping Minami with his coursework out of the inexhaustible goodness of his heart.

*

For some godforsaken reason Minami doesn't _want_ to do coursework no matter how much Yuuri tries to sweet talk him, because Minami is totally incorrigible and just wants to watch reruns of terrible soap operas.

The lights on the ship are beginning to soften, indicating that the day is coming to an end and recruits should be returning to their cabins or winding down somewhere on the entertainment deck. Yuuri is standing at one of the automated food dispensers, filling a bowl with salty cinnamon popcorn when Larissa chimes in through one of the wall speakers. "Officer Katsuki, please report to the hangar bay immediately. There has been a crash landing, and emergency services are required."

Yuuri rushes back to his cabin, spends five minutes wrestling with his EVA suit, and another five minutes sprinting down corridors with Minami trailing after him, screaming out questions to which Yuuri has no answer. They arrive in the hangar embarrassingly late, and Yuuri is gasping for breath as he makes a beeline for Otabek, who is standing several feet away from the glossiest, most _glitzy_ jetliner Yuuri has ever seen. Minami putters up alongside him, eyes widening like saucers when he sees the jet. "Wooow! It's _pink_ …"

"Minami, go get a stretcher. Otabek, what happened? Whose craft is this?"

Otabek is frowning at the wrist monitor on his EVA suit. "We're not sure who's inside or why they're here, but somehow they had clearance to land. I'm waiting for a status update from Larissa while she scans."

The craft in question is, for the most part, not unlike other jetliners that Yuuri's seen before. It looks sleek and sturdy even while it's awkwardly tipped on its side and steam is billowing out of its cooling vents. Really the main thing is the fact that it's been painted a gradient pink, one end of the ship a pale shade of bubblegum which darkens to a cherry coke color, with clean-cut white accents running all over. "Larissa's aware of just two lifeforms on board, but there's been no communication. The ship itself seems to be a new model." Otabek pauses before adding, "Although I don't think all of them look like this." 

"Huh. I'm going to take a closer look," Yuuri says, and Otabek nods. "Please have security on standby."

Hot, white sparks flicker at the base of the jet where it's crash landed. Though it's taken a serious hit, Yuuri can still hear the engines running, and the faint hum of a generator within. He half-circles the craft before finding an exit hatch, and tentatively clambers through its diameter, only to flop down on his ass when he forgets it's an exit hatch, and he misses the wall ladder leading down into the jet's interior.

Inside, the jet is almost pitch-black, and Yuuri is without his bearings, so he's more than startled when can feel someone, or some _thing_ pawing at his thigh. He lets out an alarmed yelp before his EVA suit glows to life to faintly illuminate his surroundings—and there's a _dog_ in front of him, astonishingly ordinary-looking for a creature stranded in voguish cosmos.  It looks like Vicchan. Maybe it's some kind of siren? If so, it's either very confused and not doing a great job, or Yuuri is emptier inside than he initially thought. Uncharacteristic as it is for him, he really doesn't want anything to do with it right now, so he nudges it away with his leg and starts moving through the jet.

"Yuuri," Otabek comms in. "Are you safe? What's inside? Do you need me to come help you? Minami wants to come with you but I'd advise against it." At that, Yuuri can hear Minami protesting in the background.

"It's hard to see anything, but I think I found one of the lifeforms Larissa scoped. It looks like a poodle…he's just looking at me right now so I'm going to continue through the vessel." Yuuri hesitates. "Actually, is it okay if I let him out? He seems harmless." So far this rescue-mission-slash-intruder-alert is not what Yuuri thought it would be, but it's far more interesting than whatever he's usually doing with Minami at this hour. 

"Right. We'll send the creature to quarantine and have Larissa check its biometrics."

While Yuuri is busy scooping up the dog—and it's a considerably docile creature who apparently doesn't mind this complete stranger's manhandling—he hears Minami asking Otabek if he can accompany the dog to quarantine, and Otabek responding that that is absolutely not the point of quarantine and, ' _Isn't Yuuri supposed to be helping you with your coursework? What do you two even do in your spare time?_ ', as if Yuuri is solely responsible for Minami's shortcomings and it's totally incomprehensible to Otabek that not all his medical staff spend their free time memorising health codes.

When the pup is done and dealt with, Yuuri turns to face the chamber he's in. It's some kind of passenger cabin, with velvet seats lined up on either side of the room. Other than that, the room is small and unassuming, so he continues through the only passage leading out of the chamber. He passes through what seems to be a cargo storage unit, though it seems repurposed in that there's only a couple of cardboard boxes in one corner of the room, and a pile of rumpled sheets atop a mattress off to the side. There are wide, one-way windows looking out into the Cupid's expansive hangar. He can see Otabek talking into the mouthpiece on his wrist, while Minami gushes over the poodle Yuuri has just released. Captain Baranovskaya has made her way down to the hangar; naturally she's still fully dressed in fleet uniform while most of the crew are already asleep.

Strangely, Yuuri is glad to be within the mysterious confines of a crashed vessel rather than outside where she's barking out commands left right and center. He keeps walking.

Finally, Yuuri stumbles upon the cockpit, which is a _mess_. Screwdrivers, stockings, and sundry other things are strewn about the floor. On the walls—lewd, holographic pin-ups, and dozens of intricate, hand-drawn star maps complete with twinkling LEDs. The console is blaring something in a language Yuuri can't understand, though it doesn't sound encouraging and someone's spilled coffee all over it. Hesitantly, Yuuri steps forward and plants a hand on the back of the console chair where someone is passed out, and swivels it around to see who's sitting there.

"Oh my God," Yuuri mutters to himself. He lifts his comm bracelet. "Otabek, I found the pilot. He's incapacitated but—"Yuuri presses two fingers to his ex-boyfriend's pulse point "—he's alive."

Baranovskaya's transmission automatically filters above Otabek's response. "Katsuki, do you have any idea who the pilot could be?"

"Yes, Captain." _He's a world-class jerk and the only tongue I ever had in my throat._  "I believe this is one of the new recruits who was supposed to arrive in transit a week ago." He can't help himself. "He's clearly a stickler for first impressions."

*

321882.81 — _six years ago_

Victor comes out of the bathroom in a whirl of steam and drops of hot water, wearing what can only be described as an honest to god _négligée_. Yuuri makes a noise like a dying animal and buries his face further into his engineering textbook from where he's curled up at the edge of Victor's twin-sized bed. Victor's doing that thing that girls do with their hair, a fluffy towel wrapped up on his head like a pile of freshly-driven snow: it's shockingly cute and leaves his neck freshly exposed and shining with water. None of this is described in his engineering textbook and yet somehow Yuuri is picking up on it anyway.

It's possible that Victor's roommate is nothing like the sadist Victor makes him out to be. Yuuri thinks if he was only acquainted with Victor and not hopelessly lost on him, he'd probably hate rooming with Victor too, because Victor can be kind of atrocious sometimes.

"Are you wearing that to bed?" Yuuri asks, a little helplessly.

"Sorry. I'm hot." Victor is obviously not sorry. "I'll wear a shirt on top if you want." Yuuri's about to reply something stupid like ' _What's a shirt? I'm an engineering major, by the way_ ,' but it's rendered a useless effort when Victor plugs in his hairdryer. He sighs and flattens himself on Victor's bed. Through the windows in the ceiling, Yuuri can make out a few blurry constellations; Cassiopeia, Hercules, Capricornus—oh, Victor's a capricorn.

" _Lights_ ," Victor says once he's finished drying his hair, closing the bathroom door behind him. Immediately the dormitory darkens, until Yuuri can barely make out Victor's lean silhouette as he walks toward him, with the look of both predator and prey in that stupid, skimpy nightshirt. His hair is down again, falling past his shoulders, paleness itself. Victor clambers on top of him, no, _over_ him, thank God, Yuuri's going to implode. Victor's leg brushes his thigh (is that silk or is that skin?), his hair tickles Yuuri's neck—Victor is so close that Yuuri can smell the roses. When Victor is settled next to him, he's lying on his side and his head is pillowed on his arm and he's watching Yuuri closely, waiting for something; the beginning of the collision. Victor has his calf hanging off of Yuuri's, and a hand on Yuuri's bicep.

"Oh my God," Yuuri mumbles, turning on his side to face him. "What are you looking at me like that for?"

"What am I doing wrong?" Victor asks, and Yuuri mistakes it for, ' _Why are you uncomfortable?_ ' but Victor huffs and goes on to say, "Why won't you just _touch_ me?"

Yuuri feels a hot flash of panic. He swallows. Victor's half-scowling like he's trying to stay focused, his lower lip wobbling like he's trying not to cry. Like he's _ashamed_. "If you don't want to be here, you can get out."

Yuuri's heart is stricken. "I—I don't know what you want."

Victor blinks twice, eyes wet like he doesn't know what to do with him. Granted, he's wearing _négligée_. Yuuri's just been slow on the uptake because all the blood in his brain rushed to his dick five minutes ago.

"I just told you," Victor says so quietly that Yuuri can't help but take Victor's leg and sling it fully over his waist; Victor responds in earnest and lifts himself to straddle Yuuri's hips. Victor's eyes are trained on him as Yuuri drags a hand slowly past his knee, then up his thigh and past his hips beneath the slip dress, until his fingers are splayed along the ridges of Victor's shoulder blades. Victor is soft, unscarred, and warm. Yuuri swirls his fingers in Victor's venusian dimples until Victor arches his back and reaches down to palm himself through sheer fabric, looking for all the world like he couldn't be more agitated. He blushes, skin hot, hair tangled and still damp—above him, burning, all the stars in _canes venatici_.

Victor's thighs are shivering, his stomach tight, and Yuuri wants to get him closer. Victor whimpers when Yuuri brushes his hand out of the way, tugs down his briefs and squeezes the head of his cock, running his thumb over his slit. Yuuri's hips jerk—"Don't do that," Yuuri groans. Victor nods shakily, tries to still himself, and Yuuri smears precome down his cock and rubs slowly until Victor's sticky, sweating, shivering in a cold, dark room. Victor's breath is shaky and broken as he fucks into Yuuri's fist, bracing his hands on Yuuri's chest as he leans forward, moaning with his words crushed into something senseless and frustrated. Victor's thrusts begin to stagger, wetness and pleasure gathering between his legs. The bedsprings are creaking beneath them as Victor babbles like he's lost his mind, hair falling into his face—Victor sighs breathy again and again, and Yuuri can see nothing else as Victor rises onto his knees and comes on his chest, Victor's eyes screwed shut and tears leaking down his flushed cheeks.

"Oh God," Victor stutters, when he finally opens his eyes, looking like a deer caught in the headlights. "I'm sorry."

Yuuri doesn't know how to tell him that that word does not mean what Victor thinks it means, so he says nothing. He pushes Victor—who is wide-eyed and watching him anxiously—back onto the bed, and stumbles into the bathroom.

He doesn't dare turn the lights on until the door is shut behind him, so Victor can't see him jerking off into the toilet bowl and using his free hand to cover his mouth. He flushes, washes his hands and wipes down his chest, and tries not to look too closely at himself in the mirror.

When he goes back to bed, Victor is curled up like a shrimp, facing the wall away from Yuuri. The halogen light of the bathroom spills out into the room, and Yuuri only just notices now that the négligée is pink like Victor's lip gloss. It must be his color.

He swallows down something thick and awful. Victor is easier to look at when the lights go off. Yuuri creeps over to the bed, presses himself up against Victor, and lets him slip his hand over his waist.

"You never kissed me," Yuuri murmurs into his shoulder.

"I'm never going to if you keep running away from me." Victor sniffles, shifts, shuffles inelegantly to face him. "But I will one day. I'll surprise you."

"I'm…looking forward to it," Yuuri says. He's falling asleep all of a sudden. Victor leans over him and pulls a blanket over the both of them. God, he still  _feels_ hot, little stars of sweat caught in his wispy baby hairs and gleaming in the sweet moonlight.  


"Well don't," Victor says haughtily, narrowing his eyes. He slips a hand up the back of Yuuri's shirt and presses them together at their bellies, their waists, their thighs. Yuuri presses his lips to the pulse at Victor's neck. His heart beats like a gum bubble pops, a pink and pleasant surprise each time. "You'll never see it coming."

*

328718.25 — _present day_

Yuuri is alone with Victor when he wakes up in the ICU.

It's a late and lonely evening. The lights of the medbay are harsh and half-blinding, always primed for the worst case scenario. Yuuri's spent many a night watching over patients who thrashed in agony until their bodies eventually shut down beneath the twin terrors of sleep deprivation and profuse blood loss. EVA suits rarely malfunction, but in the few seconds that biotic regulation fails, the body begins to mummify and it's his job to amputate in order to make way for the greater good. Minami has only ever seen it happen once, and Yuuri had been forced to kick him out of the surgical ward in the end. Later Yuuri had embargoed Minami's coursework to try and get it into his head: that healing is a force of nature, that if a cure does not exist then it never had to, that there are no ends or beginnings: only growth, decay, and eventual repair—rinse and repeat.

Victor is not a worst case scenario. He's not bleeding all over the floor and Yuuri hasn't sawed off any of his limbs, which is a cut above plenty of cases. His condition is stable and he's not sustained any serious injuries. Captain Baranovskaya had approved his work contract even in his comatose state, and Otabek had followed in her footsteps and cleared him for duty personally. Yuuri suspects it's slightly premature: Victor is lying unconscious in a medical ward with a possible head injury. When he finally stirs, Yuuri is close to falling asleep in an office chair.

" _Ugh_ ," is the first thing that Victor spits out, and Yuuri's thinking along similar lines. Victor props himself up on his elbows, rubs at his face and blinks until he's adjusted to the light. When his eyes settle on Yuuri, he squints. "Do I know you?"

Yuuri's not entirely sure how to answer that question, so he makes like Victor does not know him. "I'm a doctor, Officer. Last night you suffered a crash in the hangar bay, so we had you brought up to look for injuries. Can I ask how you're feeling?" 

It's nothing like the answer Victor is expecting, but it suffices. "Absolutely peachy," he says, though he looks far from it. His eyes are bloodshot, his complexion frail, and there are minor cuts and bruises littered across his face. Victor glances around, taking in his surroundings. "Where's Makkachin?"

"Makkachin?" Yuuri frowns; as far as he knows, there's no such person on board. The name is so peculiar he's certain he'd remember it. Then it hits him. "Oh, your dog! In quarantine, until we know it's not carrying any diseases."

Victor looks downright offended when he says, "She's not carrying _diseases_. She's positively charming."

This conversation is rapidly devolving into a total waste of everyone's time. Yuuri's not in a hurry, so he humors Victor. "I'm surprised she was permitted at the Lux fleet. But you can't bring an unauthorized animal aboard without telling anyone."

Victor scowls at him. "Sorry I couldn't break myself out of my coma to give you her pedigree certificate. So, she's still _alive?_ "

Yuuri is taken aback. "Of course! But you'll need to talk to Captain Baranovskaya about how you'll…be keeping her." He's currently avoiding a meeting with Baranovskaya about a crew member's pregnancy, so he's hardly in any position to be ragging on Victor for wanting to keep his dog.

"Captain Baranovskaya of…the S.S. Cupid," Victor says, leaning back now that he's somewhat placated. "Oh, that's good. At least I managed to get on the right ship."

Yuuri is just pondering what an impressive specimen Victor has blossomed into when Minami barges in, with two hot chocolates to soothe the interruption. Though he doesn't share Minami's predilection for sweetness, Yuuri's still affronted when Minami completely ignores him in favor of gaping at Victor, his mouth hanging open like the _fish_ that he is. "You're awake, Mr. Nikiforov! Your spaceship is so cool! And your dog is so cute!"

Victor glances between Yuuri (visibly disgruntled) and Minami (fish) then back at Yuuri with a look as if to say, ' _This is how I think I deserve to be greeted._ ' Victor also inadvertently plunders Yuuri's rightful hot chocolate, and Yuuri doesn't ever think he's felt so embittered just because he didn't get something he didn't want in the first place. Then he remembers that Victor probably hasn't had anything to eat or drink in a couple of days, so he decides to ignore it.

"Ah, Nurse Katsuki, now I remember why I came—"

"—I keep telling you not to call me that," Yuuri cuts in to scold before he realizes his mistake. He looks over at Victor, who has paused his inhaling of hot chocolate to inspect Yuuri closely. Minami barrels on anyway. _You fish_ , Yuuri thinks. _You're ruining my life faster than I can throw it away._

"Isabella's blood tests came back, so I'm leaving them with you now, okay?" Minami drops a manila envelope on Yuuri's lap, gives it a pat for whatever reason, and promptly leaves. "Good night, Mr. Nikiforov. And see you later, Yuuri!" He beams.

Once he's left, Victor clears his throat. His complexion has evidently returned, because now he has watermelon pink flush across his cheeks and nose. "Yuuri Katsuki?" Yuuri stiffens. "You're a nurse." Victor pauses. "Why are you a nurse?"

"I told you I'm a doctor." Yuuri doesn't especially feel like sharing all the details of his disastrous academic career. "My shift is almost over, Officer." He rises to his feet, and looks Victor in the eye; he looks frozen, shocked, embarrassed. "I think—I think it's for the best if someone else is assigned to you…I'll make some calls."

*

"Yuuri?" Chris is still wiping sleep from his eyes when he answers Yuuri's knocks.

"Hi, Chris, can I take you up on that massage now?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- lutetia is the name of an asteroid, also the predecessor city before paris i think  
> \- a couple of references to blades of glory (bad) and tombstone (good)  
> \- the color scheme of victor's ship is based off of his FS costume
> 
> edit 26/04/17: turns out, if you are floating around in space without a protective barrier, freezing to death is the last of your worries (of which there are [very very very many](https://www.cnet.com/news/what-happens-to-the-unprotected-human-body-in-space/))! so i have very STEALTHILY edited a line about EVA suits providing "thermal regulation" and now it is "biotic regulation" which is far more vague about the actual inner workings of EVA suits, because over here we are allergic to BLATANT scientific inaccuracies. we like our scientific inaccuracies to be KIND OF SUBTLE but NOT REALLY


	3. Chapter 3

True to Victor's word, Makkachin is perfectly pure and does not pose a threat of infection to crew members, so she hasn't yet been ejected out of airlock. Unfortunately these are not the only baseline requirements for a place aboard the _S.S. Cupid_. She's still not allowed to wander the ship: Yuuri had sweated through his scrubs when he'd taken her in a carrier up to Victor's newly-assigned quarters for fear of being caught by the captain, or someone else uptight enough to give him trouble for it.

"You can't let Makkachin out of your room," Yuuri tells him frankly: dogs chew wires, dogs get stuck in ventilation ducts, dogs are not hypoallergenic—dogs are not essential to the mission, is what he's getting at. Upon hearing all this, Victor continues last night's chiding without missing a beat.

"First you _abandon_ me in an empty hospital after I wake up from a coma, because you don't like me—which, by the way, very professional—and now you're making me imprison my dog?" Victor glares him down, as reproachful as can be from where he's sprawled out on the top bunk with a beauty magazine, his hair sticky with a glittery leave-in hair mask. Yuuri is _this_ close to snatching that magazine and smacking Victor over the head with it, but instead he crouches down to let Makkachin out of her carrier. Makkachin has a disposition much sweeter than that of her tempestuous owner. Yuuri sits down, cross-legged on the floor of Victor's dorm—though it's surely uninvited—so that she can fall into his lap and snuffle at his belly. She's almost a replica of Vicchan, just a lot fatter and a lot more alive.

"It's hardly professional to crash your ship into a wall because you fell asleep at the console." Yuuri says this in an out-of-place gentle voice, because it's unethical to lash out with Makkachin dozing on top of him. "If you want her to have more walking space, you can take her back to quarantine and visit her there until—"

"—Absolutely not. She'll _die_ without me—!"

"— _Until_ the Iwatoka conference, where you can make a request for her approval. Maybe you can convince the captain that Makkachin is worth the risk." Yuuri gives Makkachin's belly a pat. "And I hope that you do. She's very cute."

He looks up at Victor, whose beauty magazine lays abandoned in his lap. His face has healed considerably, Yuuri notes, though it's hard to appreciate with Victor glowering at him. "I'd rather go see her right now." Obviously Victor holds Makkachin above all other lifeforms between here and heaven above.

Yuuri shrugs. "Either way, it's not my problem." He's loath to wrangle Makkachin from the cradle of his knees as he rises to his feet. Makkachin whines, before promptly making an olympic leap up into Victor's bunk to seek out the affections of another. _Heartbreaker_ , Yuuri thinks, before fixing Victor with a meaningful look. "Figure something out. The medbay doesn't have any therapy dogs. Do what you will with that information." After all, Makkachin—unlike her owner—reminds Yuuri of something good, something worth saving.

When Yuuri leaves, Victor flops down in his bunk, burying his face in his pillow with a sigh, and smearing his hair mask everywhere.

*

Unlike Isonoe—inhabited, colonised, commercialised—Iwatoka is a mission planet. Its documentation is not much more than a few estimated coordinates scrawled in the long-forgotten ledgers of pirates. _Cupid's_ stellar cartographers had honed in on Iwatoka's dozens, no, _hundreds_ of moons, then brought it up with Chris. Chris had brought it up with Lilia, and within seventy-two ship hours, _Cupid's_ finest flight engineers had drawn up their best estimations for a trajectory to Iwatoka.

Those trajectories are continuously being refined, as _Cupid_ sets scorch to gallons upon gallons of plasma, navigating through finicky asteroid belts and weathering turbulent meteor storms. In the two weeks that they've been hurtling towards their destination, seven of Engineering's two dozen rovers have managed to land on Iwatoka. In a surprisingly pleasant turn of events, Iwatoka has a breathable atmosphere, a gravity gentle within reason—and _water_ , the ever-blessed compound. Thusly the research mission is looking more promising with every passing moment.

Fifteen minutes into the pre-landing conference, _Cupid_ and all its inhabitants unknowingly pass a small, but significant sign: ' _WELCOME TO MESSIER 63 — THE SUNFLOWER GALAXY_.' Though nobody will ever know, it has been hand-painted with a picture of a pineapple lotus—presumably by someone who has no idea what a sunflower is.

At the conference, Yuuri finds himself being delegated as the one and only medical officer being assigned to the research mission. _Cupid_ is running low on medical staff, and Yuuri—Otabek's first officer, so first pick—is the most experienced doctor they can give up without leaving _Cupid_ understaffed. Lilia breaks this to him with no measure of sympathy: the mission team is composed of just a dozen crew members, all assigned some unique role, most of whom Yuuri is only half-acquainted with. One of those crew members happens to be the newly-contracted Phichit Chulanont, a cheery botanist Yuuri has meaning to talk to about his veggie project. J.J. is coming, to his own displeasure—lately Yuuri's only seen him wagging his tail after Isabella, enthused by her new baby bump. J.J. has been as subtle as he can be about it all, which is to say he's been absolutely useless and Yuuri has been dragging him aside in increasingly desperate attempts to get him to _shut up_.  Also assigned to the mission are Michele Crispino and Emil Nekola, both researchers, though that's the extent of their similarities. Yuuri is only acquainted with them through standard check-ups—he supposes he'll be finding out more about them in the coming days. The whole operation is being run, for the most part, by Seung-gil, who is the lead researcher aboard _Cupid_ and also notoriously contemptuous. Otabek likes him. For some reason.

"Finally, you'll all be flown down by Pilot Nikiforov and whoever he selects as his co-pilot in one of the cargo shuttles," Lilia says, looking weary of this conference. Behind her, blurry images of Iwatoka flicker in the baby blue light of the hologrammatic projector. "During your mission, Cupid will orbit Iwatoka and gather satellite imagery. You will rendezvous with Cupid on one of Iwatoka's nearby moons after the mission is complete. Questions?"

"I thought Victor Nikiforov was the idiot who crashed his jet against the hull last week?" Michele pipes up, arms folded across his chest. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Across the boardroom table, Victor is looking daggers at Yuuri, who didn't even  _say_ anything but might be biting his cheek in a chivalrous attempt not to snicker.

"He is." Lilia does not elaborate any further than that. Michele mutters something like, ' _Oh, fantastic_ ' and Emil gives him a reassuring pat on the arm. Half a second later, Michele twitches like he just kicked someone under the table, and Emil flinches, almost like he just got kicked under the table.

"Captain," Yuuri starts. "Am I expected to just…stay on the campsite while everyone else is working?"

"I trust your expertise, Katsuki. I want every single person at this table returned to my ship after this is over. I expect you to do whatever that takes." Yuuri's eyes widen in surprise. It's high praise, coming from Lilia, and difficult to filter in his mind. Before he can reply at all, Lilia issues her dismissal, and everyone is getting out of their seats and shuffling into the ship elevator.

Only Victor remains in the conference room. Yuuri does not catch a glimpse of his conversation with the Captain, but does silently pray for Makkachin as the elevator doors close. He'll ask Chris later if the request ever made it through. If Victor has even an iota of the strange charm he once had, then maybe even Lilia could yield.

*

Minami cries when Yuuri explains to him that he'll be leaving the ship for a few days to accompany the research mission to Iwatoka. Yuuri watches him, hopelessly, as fat globs of tears tremble on the tip of Minami's chin and splash down onto his textbook. Eventually he resigns himself to rubbing circles into Minami's back while Minami leans heavily on him, mouth wobbling as their rinky-dink television set plays an old broadcast of an android telenovela.

Yuuri leaves their cabin in the middle of the night to board the cargo shuttle for Iwatoka, and rolls his eyes but otherwise does not protest when Minami follows after him like an ugly duckling. At the hangar, Victor is leaning on the side of the cargo shuttle, making idle with a data pad while Minami bids his tearful goodbye to Yuuri, waving silken handkerchief and all. Yuuri groans and beckons him over from where he's standing on the steps leading up to the shuttle. "Don't be such a baby," Yuuri chastises as he wraps Minami in a hug. He takes Minami by the shoulders when Minami does not relinquish him after fifty-three seconds. Yuuri can't help but feel somewhat affronted that he has to tip his chin back now to look Minami in the eye since this boy had the _gall_ to embark on such a horrendous growth spurt without Yuuri's express permission.

In the corner of his eye, Yuuri can just barely make out Victor watching them, not even trying to mask his amusement. He ignores that, and faces Minami. "I'll be back soon," he soothes. "And you can comm me whenever you want while I'm gone." This does very little to stem whatever kind of meltdown Minami is having but Yuuri more or less shoves him away anyway before Minami can get his teenage hormones all over Yuuri's EVA suit.

Victor shakes his head and tsks audibly when he follows Yuuri into the cargo shuttle. "Don't tell me you're dating that poor child."

"Who, me?" Yuuri briefly feigns innocence, pausing in his stride to unbuckle a medkit from the wall. "I'm not. I'm just his…mentor." Actually Yuuri is no such thing, since Minami's starting to grow out of shadowing Yuuri. He does, however, try to lead Minami away from the mistakes that Yuuri made in his own youth, not unlike a cat holding its foolish kitten by the nape. For starters, Yuuri always tries to keep Minami at least fifteen feet away from Chris at all times, and he makes Minami spend at least three hours a week in the ship's gymnasium. Also, if Minami ever meets a mysterious, beautiful Russian boy, Yuuri will sit him down and explain that it's just hormones—that in six years, give or take, Beautiful Russian Boy will be living out of a dirty jet, probably jerking it to degenerate posters of oiled-up men hosing themselves down on car hoods.

"Huh. That's sexy," Victor says idly, inspecting his nail beds. _Intolerable_. Yuuri sifts through epipens and analgesics, checking for expiry dates. He remembers packing these two years ago with his favorite star-spangled band-aids, and cherry-flavored hard candies.

"It's not _sexy_. He's eighteen." Yuuri fastens the medkit back to the wall of the shuttle, and continues walking down the bridge. "What did the captain say about Makkachin?"

"Ah, she's been promoted to resident! The captain said she'd be _interested_ in having a trained therapy dog aboard," Victor declares, puffing up like a proud mother hen. "Although she doesn't have much clearance. She's not a high-ranking officer like _you_." Victor plants a hand on Yuuri's shoulder, and steers him around to face him. "Now would you be a darling and stop wandering around. I want to take off as soon as possible."

Yuuri shrugs off Victor's hands. "Are you going to stay awake while you're piloting or should I go find a crash helmet?"

"I resent that, you know." Victor frowns at him with an exaggerated pout. Yuuri glances down, somewhat guilty, at Victor's lips and absentmindedly notes that whatever was in those hydrating lip masks he found on Victor's jet must be working very, _very_ well for him. "You've turned into such a _bully_ since we fell apart."

Yuuri tears his eyes away from Victor's mouth and snorts derisively at _fell apart_. Victor cocks an eyebrow at him, then huffs indignantly. "Go and buckle up, wonderboy."

*

Yuri Plisetsky, an actual _child_ and somehow also Victor's co-pilot of choice, informs the passenger cabin about six hours into the flight that they'll be landing three days before _Cupid_ docks near Iwatoka. The _S.S. Cupid_ , for all it's worth, is hopeless to try and overtake a starship which is so much more compact and streamlined. Currently Iwatoka is just a shimmering pinball in the distance, but Victor assures them over the ship speakers that they'll be landing near the campsite in just a few minutes.

For the most part the journey is punctuated by Michele's extreme dissatisfaction at pretty much everything that is happening—and also some things that are _not_ happening, just for good measure—interspersed with Emil's effusive cheeriness and the sound of J.J. snoring on Yuuri's shoulder. Everyone else is either resting up before the mission or not so obnoxious that they choose to complain all throughout the flight. Back on _Cupid_ , stellar cartographers and Engineering are continuously transmitting the new information they're receiving from the rovers on Iwatoka. Yuuri, restless and drooled-on, scrolls through the new findings on a data pad.  Iwatoka is, in every sense of the word, exceptional. The planet is seventy-two times the size of the planetary standard, an anomaly spinning backwards at breakneck speed. Seasons can last from up to a couple of years right down to just several days, arriving in no obvious pattern and ranging hugely in intensity, and _Cupid's_  rovers are relaying vastly diverse readings depending on where they've decided to nest.

In other words, there's no telling what they'll find once they touch down.

"That's nice," says Emil, because he is such a _cherub_. "I like surprises."

"Ugh," Michele says. " _Ugh._ "

Yuuri jostles J.J. awake once Victor announces that they've landed, and sweeps some drool off his shoulder. Seung-gil announces while they're unboarding that they'll be trekking thirty minutes to the campsite, and that their EVA suits are now on a shared communications line. They're instructed to take a pulse pistol, and a pair of Achilles's boots.

The fabric of EVA suits tends to harden beneath the ankle to protect the wearer from undergrowth, but they're still prone to tearing on the outermost layers. The boots are a nice bonus, but Yuuri's more than a little unwieldy with weapons. He holsters the pistol on his hip and hopes he'll be allowed to leave it alone.

"Why didn't we bring a buggy?" Michele grouses, heaving a bulky container out of the cargo shuttle.

"Did you see room for a buggy on that shuttle?" Yuri Plisetsky cuts back.

"Oh, so we brought a twelve-year-old but we didn't need a _buggy_."

Yuuri somehow doubts that all of this is standard procedure for what you do first when you land on an alien planet. This doesn't bode well for the mission at hand.

"Be quiet," Seung-gil snaps at them. "Now everyone find a buddy to partner up with so none of us get lost."

"You can't be serious."

One of the downsides of the shared comm line is that Yuuri doesn't always know who's talking, but nevertheless he's aware that there's never a time when Seung-gil isn't serious. Around him, people are already partnering up. Victor has paired up with Yuri Plisetsky, Emil has for some reason slapped a hand on Michele's shoulder as if to say, ' _Dibs, mine_ ', and even Seung-gil has gotten over his prickliness long enough to saddle up with J.J. Yuuri's briefly reminded of his days in preschool when this was always the worst part of his day—when he was always the fat kid and the last one standing, until his teacher would take pity on him and tell him that they could be partners that day, and ' _Isn't that fun?_ '

"Hey, Katsuki!" Someone pats Yuuri on the arm, and Yuuri's sad, _sad_ flashback is rudely interrupted. "Buddy up with me, okay?"

"What," Yuuri blurts. It's Phichit Chulanont, grinning at him like it's not _hideously_ embarrassing to be aware of Yuuri Katsuki's existence during buddy-up time. Yuuri blinks, and straightens. "Ah, sorry! I mean—okay!" What is he supposed to do now? This has never happened before. Do they hold hands?

Phichit tilts his head to the side, then laughs a little. "We're going to fall behind, bus buddy."

"Oh, right." The rest of the troupe has moved on without them. Yuuri's still recovering from whiplash. It only takes a little bit of jogging to catch up, but Yuuri's reverted back into a clumsy preschooler, glancing over at his bus buddy like he can't comprehend that it's not Miss Asuhara, bending her knees slightly so she can gently hold his tiny, squishy hand.

In the end he's glad Phichit is not holding his hand, because he's sweating—Iwatoka is hot, but not so dire that his EVA suit will expend energy to keep him cool.  They march through Iwatoka's unfurling wilderness at a steady pace, wading through ankle-deep streams and sticky pools of mud. Here Iwatoka is densely packed with unruly vegetation. Massive trees tower miles above them, piercing the stratosphere. Where little patches of sunlight have managed to claw their way to the jungle floor, fragrant lotuses and wild grasses bloom. Yuuri can only compare Iwatoka to Earth and yet he knows: those are not cicadas. Those are not wasps, dung beetles, katydids, or crickets. That is not a baobab tree, and those are not poinsettias, and there is no heliconia around for billions of miles. There is never anywhere like home. It's all alien. It's all brand new, undiscovered, unresearched. Iwatoka is the kind of planet you tear to pieces in colonization, set ablaze, then snap in half like a wishbone and then roll the fragments around in your filthy hands like a couple of _baoding_ balls. Humans like to stick their fingers into planetary cores the way they do fresh cherry cobbler.

Everything is hot, humid, and there's not a breath of wind to be found anywhere. Yuuri's boots are smeared with fungi and soil, the back of his neck surely burnt by now, his cheeks pink and scalding beneath the sun blazing overhead.

When they arrive at the designated campsite, a wide clearing in shallow wildgrass, Yuuri is dizzy with dryness. He's dehydrated, and he suspects the same goes for everyone else. His lips are cracked, his body drained and thrumming with sheer heat. His EVA suit is warping over dried sweat. Quite frankly the first thing on his mind is to jump into the nearest lake he can find, but first things first they'll have to run water tests in case the pH happens to be minus sixty-three or something similarly atrocious.

The sunset on Iwatoka lasts a couple of hours; the sun takes up a huge fraction of the sky, a blazing plate of egg yolk gold, canvassed in rich shades of plum and kumquat. It's difficult for Yuuri to admire it without further drying out his eyes, so he sets about propping up a small tent to sleep in. It's archaic, naturally, more of an emotional comfort than anything else since it's going to protect him from absolutely nothing—but on some planets, the days outlast the years, so it's important to be able to block out light when you're falling behind on sleep.

He learns quickly that Phichit is chipper, and charismatic, and filled with boundless energy. Instead of preparing a place to sleep for the night, he immediately goes to work on readying a research marquee for tomorrow. Yuuri winces in sympathy when the marquee is half-righted, the sky inky black, and Phichit's cheery disposition is finally beginning to buckle as the sun falls down right in front of him.  It would've been cruel not to invite him to share Yuuri's tent.

"You're a lifesaver, Yuuri," Phichit sighs, rubbing the apple of his cheek into his sleeping bag. "I'm so tired! Are you tired? My EVA suit still hasn't turned on thermostat and I think I'm going to _die_ ," he wails.

Yuuri's tent was small enough as it was before he decided to take Phichit in; their sleeping bags take up the entirety of the tent floor, pushed up against one another. But it's not so bad; Iwatoka's temperatures have dropped ruthlessly since night fell, and Yuuri is shivering beneath a layer of his own sweat. At least he's been blessed with a space heater shaped like a friend.

"Mine's soaked through," Yuuri mourns. "I need a cold shower and a continental breakfast."

"And all you have is me." Phichit nudges him—Yuuri can just about make out the shape of Phichit's cattish grin, a few inches from his own face. "Poor you. Also, I love your night light."

Obviously it's not _Yuuri's_ night light, just a glowing egg-shaped memento from Minami, who miraculously still hasn't tried to comm Yuuri. Yuuri only yawns in response, vestiges of exhaustion now crashing over him in waves.

Yuuri is sore all over, icky, and probably smells awfully ripe. He's used to the muted din of roaring plasma engines lulling him to sleep. He doesn't like sleeping alone—who does?—these last few years, it's been Minami that soothes the quietness, whose chatter eventually melts into mumbling sleep-talk. Before that, it was Victor, running fingers through Yuuri's hair and murmuring all his wet and vivid dreams in his ear to make him shiver, their bodies blurring together and their heartbeats holding hands. When he was young, on long subway rides or stuck in traffic, he would curl up on his side with his head pillowed on Mari's legs. His sister would pinch his cheek and push the hair from his forehead, flattening her cool palm over his hot eyelids. Even at home, there was always the clatter of glasses of  _sake_  late at night, and the muted chatter of total strangers playing cards or singing hushed lullabies to their young ones.

Yuuri doesn't know much about Phichit, but his presence is undeniably what relaxes him enough to let him drift off into slumber. The easy blow of his breath lands on Yuuri's nose. The tips of his fingers rest only a few inches from Yuuri's face. It's all the closeness he wants that he could never outright ask for. He's grateful for it, always. He'll sleep just fine.

*

Nights are long on Iwatoka, and the days much longer, but both are sweet and painless to look at. In the morning when Yuuri crawls out of his tent, the sky is flushed peach pink with sunrise. He knits his fingers together behind his neck, curls his spine backwards, and rolls his shoulders back, silently praying that the day will pass without too many trials.

Since the team arrived at the clearing they've set up the live-in half of the camp. Sleeping tents dot the campsite, each with a little paper lantern propped up beside it, and every single one has managed to attract a handful of delicate insects with their warm glow. There are an odd dozen sealed crates piled together at the center of the clearing like a cornucopia, stocked with food and water and sundry other supplies. The two research marquees which will act as makeshift laboratories for the next few days are both set up now, alongside the medical tent which Yuuri needs to stock up soon.

But first things first: Yuuri clips on his Achilles' boots and sets off on a jog. Now that he's here, he's relatively—well, _useless_. It doesn't exactly take a medical license to pick up a tube of aloe vera and smear it over your sunburn, which was about the furthest extent of yesterday's injuries since Seung-gil blocked Michele Crispino and Yuri Plisetsky from sending each other transmissions over the comm. As far as Yuuri's concerned, this is practically a vacation. He bends down and programs the coordinates of the campsite into his boots so that he can't get lost. Without any responsibilities, and a trail of breadcrumbs after him, Iwatoka is his playground.

While everyone else is still sleeping, Yuuri wades through matcha green rivers, orchid trees hanging low over the water, dappling white petals and sunlight over the warm water. Consequently his EVA suit rapidly changes color from its usual ultramarine blue to a glaring warning red. Not safe to bathe in, then, but nonetheless perfectly pleasant where the water is pooling around his thighs. Still dripping with river water, he walks alongside a cosmic pink lagoon brimming with salt and sparkling with sun glitter that hurts to look at.

He tramples through the heaving wilderness, sweltering even in the half-risen sun, and doesn't realize what he's looking for until he finds it: a cluster of steamy hot springs, tucked away in a pocket of the jungle. Yuuri almost cries when he dips his glove into one bath and it blessedly remains a calm blue. He doesn't waste time in peeling off his EVA suit—God, he's so _icky_ —and tossing it to the ground. He lowers himself slowly into the spring, imagining that this is home—that his mother is bustling around somewhere inside the inn, frying up fresh king prawns in tempura batter, and Vicchan is harassing all the fat and pretty koi trying to mind their own business in the indoor pond.

As he's splashing around in the spring, something is telling him that he probably should have _mentioned_ to somebody that he was going to wander off for a few hours to take a bath. Right now he's more focused on scrubbing sweat away from his skin, pointing his toes like a ballerina,  and generally being a useless member of the Specially Selected Iwatoka Research Team. If only Chris could see him now: totally in the nude, skin flushed with warmth and sweat,tinged pink like a little piggy and indulging himself.

In the self-loathing recesses of his mind he knows that if Chris ever wanted to see something like that he'd almost certainly have clearance to the years-old security footage of Yuuri, nineteen years old and alone in his quarters at three in the morning, rutting against his mattress and biting at his pillow to try and keep quiet. At the time he'd managed somehow to develop a disastrous crush on Otabek, who had seemed _oh so tall, dark, and handsome_ at the time, and Yuuri had entertained some ghastly, inexcusable fantasies about sitting in his lap, wearing his medical gloves and _only_  his medical gloves. He's no longer so depraved that he vaccinates himself sixteen times over in secret in order to end up sweating and mindless in the medbay with Otabek fussing over him, trying to figure out how Yuuri managed to contract a disease he could've sworn was eradicated a hundred years ago.

Yuuri rubs his eyelids and ducks his head underwater, surfacing moments later to the sound of approaching footsteps. He immediately freezes—did he even bring his pulse pistol? His mind pulls a blank. It's not like it matters. He _did_ take an oath to do no harm, and also he can't shoot straight to save his life, literally. He's going to die naked and alone on an alien planet. He should have _known_ this would happen.

Briefly he supposes he should be grateful it took this long, right up until the Russian red gleam of Victor Nikiforov's EVA suit comes into view. Yuuri's chest simmers with an uncomfortable concoction of simultaneous relief, frustration, and some inconvenient leftover arousal from thinking about bouncing on Otabek's knee.

Victor's whole face lights up when he sees Yuuri hovering at the edge of a hot spring. " _Yuuuuri_ , what have you found here?" He grins. "Mind if I join you? I've been feeling so _filthy_ since yesterday."

"I don't suppose you'd listen if I said yes." Yuuri reaches over to tug his EVA suit back into the spring, partly to rinse out the sweat it's collected and partly to cover his stupid dick.

"You know me so well," Victor sighs sweetly, unclasping his boots and stripping himself of his EVA suit before Yuuri can regain his senses enough to look away, and possibly start trying to atone for the sins of his past.

He's broken out of his benediction when Victor plunges unceremoniously into the spring, splashing waves of jasmine-smelling water everywhere while Yuuri regards him with considerable contempt. "Oh, that's wonderful." Victor hums. "How did you even find this place?"

"The same way you did. There was nothing to keep me busy." That's not true, really—there's plenty Yuuri could be doing right now, like lecturing the research team about the virtues of drinking water and staying well-rested, and not dying and not killing each other. But Victor genuinely has nothing to do; he's just the pilot who flew them all here. Yuuri's not even sure why he's opted to stay on Iwatoka instead of flying back to _Cupid_ to wait out the expedition.

"Mmm, not really. Seung-gil sent me to go find out where our darling nurse had run off to," Victor says, idly swirling his fingers on the surface of the spring. "But I'm glad you're taking time off. You seem so wound-up. Surely that's why you've been so cruel to me since we met again." Victor cocks his head and gives him a teasing smile.

"Victor…" Yuuri swallows, looks away. Tries again. "You should know why," he mumbles.

"Of course I do. I know it's…a fraught situation. But it was so long ago." Victor shrugs. "I mean it couldn't make it _worse_ , if we got along. I admit I thought you'd gotten over it, when it was done." It's impossible to look Victor in the eye like this. Victor makes it out like he's been so _unreasonable_. "It wasn't you—" this is exactly what it feels like to be locked in a hot car, Yuuri realizes "—it was never even me."

Woe betide him because his ex-boyfriend has evolved into the antithesis of social graces and compassion. Victor takes his excuses and flings them carelessly away like mandarin peels. "Anyway, I just had to say it. You made this whole thing so uncomfortable!" Victor laughs, a t which point Yuuri wishes that these hot springs really were toxic, and that they'd both just die.Immediately. Without too much fanfare.

The feeling that he was never good enough for someone like Victor used to dog him like a thick layer of lipid over his brain. Maybe it never really went away—maybe it just lay dormant for a few years like an ancient volcano, until his brain regurgitated it back up for the sole purpose of making him miserable all over again.  His frustration is probably laid bare on his face.

"I can't believe you thought I'd want to hear this," Yuuri says, glowering down at himself.

Victor leans back lazily in the spring. "It's like you expect me to still be in love with you."

"I don't know what I've done to make you think that," Yuuri says irritably. "I thought you'd be _married_ by now."

Victor, abruptly wide-eyed, blinks several times in rapid succession, evidently startled. In retrospect, the thought of Victor with a wife and children—rooting obnoxiously loud at Little League games, with alphabet magnets on his fridge and crummy crayon drawings blu-tacked to the walls of his cockpit—seems awfully naïve. "Married." Victor seems to be considering it. "I never really thought about it. What about you?" Victor wraps his fingers around Yuuri's ankle and slowly drags him closer. "Don't tell me there's nobody waiting for you back home."

Yuuri's grip on his EVA suit tightens. "I haven't dated since college." He yanks his foot from Victor's grasp, shuffles back until his spine presses up against the soft soil edge of the spring. Victor lets him, observing him carefully. "I guess I'm not much of a catch," he says flatly.

"Oh, _Yuuri_ ," Victor purrs. "You know that's not true. You could have anyone, if you'd only lighten up a little."

_Enough_ , Yuuri thinks. He splashes Victor's face with spring water because there's nothing else the situation calls for. Victor sighs and tips his head back to face the sky, weary of the world and all its cruelty. "I thought you were supposed to bring me back to camp."

"Don't you know I'm untamable?" Victor says airily. Yuuri suppresses a groan. He doesn't want to be manhandled back to the campsite anyhow; it's not unlikely that Victor would throw him over his shoulder and carry him back against his will.

So he steps out of the spring and tries not to fumble too much as Victor watches him pull his EVA suit back on—he's not even _pretending_ to look away, Yuuri realizes, and flushes with the indelicacy of it all. His EVA suit is still dripping but at least it's no longer rendered tacky with sweat and grime. Water seeps out of the suit in thick, glistening rivulets for several moments until it's totally dry.

"And just where do you think you're going?" Victor narrows his eyes, but doesn't make a move to stop him. "Ah, you're escaping. But you're so young I could never possibly catch you. Oh well. Seung-gil will be very upset when I tell him."

Yuuri stares down at him in disbelief. Victor is _younger_ than him. But Victor's eyes are closed and he looks fragile, laying his head on his prayered palms like a child, so Yuuri scampers off with the permission he's been handed on a silver plate.

*

Drifting flower petals fill the air and beams of sunlight strike through the forest canopy like slender shots of heaven. He's more than content to crawl through overgrown shrubbery and clamber over gargantuan fallen logs, exploring with his child's heart. Iwatoka—the seventh garden of eden, fruitful, his shining oasis—is amongst the living too. When Yuuri detaches his protective gloves from his EVA suit and presses his pruned fingertips to soft, warm topsoil, he swears can feel the planet's heartbeat.

He wanders ever further from camp, trying to focus on his surroundings instead of the image of Victor in his mind, lording aureate like a fallen seraph.

He ends up lying stomach-down on a sun-warmed boulder like a lion, watching flower beetles flit from one bloom to another. For all of Phichit's heartfelt tirades about the trials and tribulations of Iwatoka's ecosystems, hardened by streams of natural disasters and pulsing atmospheric tides, all that Yuuri finds is peace and quiet. When night eventually falls, it's difficult to trace his steps back to the campsite. He'd accounted for getting lost, but not for the fact that Iwatoka's wilderness is almost too enticing to leave.

When he makes it back to the campsite, he's quiet. His senses feel dulled once he leaves the wilderness. Phichit spots him almost immediately, and waves him over.

"Where'd you run off to?" Phichit asks through a mouthful of dragonfruit. They're sitting inside the communal marquee; most of the team have gathered for dinner, and the low hum of chatter is comforting. "Everyone was trying to figure out how you died. Seung-gil thought you were mutinying. Are you? You know I'll join you."

Yuuri pokes at his bowl of microwave chicken teriyaki. "How did you think I died?"

"Obviously you'd get abducted, because you're the cutest human on the planet." Phichit points his fork at Yuuri and winks. "Am I right? They obviously didn't kill you. Did they _probe_ you? Are you gonna have cute alien babies?"

Yuuri chooses to gloss over the fact that Phichit thinks he's 'the cutest human on the planet' because there's only like, nine other humans on this planet. "I don't have cute alien babies," he says, sadly. "All I have is you." Yuuri sighs, and Phichit laughs at him.

After dinner, Yuuri takes his sleeping bag to the edge of the clearing, away from the rest of the campsite. He's able to rip it at the seams and lay it out like a puffy blanket in the tall grass. He lies easily like that, staring up at foreign constellations, hands crossed over his chest. Most of the stars he can see are probably unnamed, most planets unventured. Iwatoka is the mother of her solar system, dwarfing everything within millions of miles of her atmosphere, bar the sun. Yuuri counts all the moons in the sky like sheep, until his consciousness starts to fade in and out, and his body warms to the balm of hypnagogia.

Later, back in the tent as he's falling asleep, he tries not to think about Victor's hands on him again after all these years.

There's unfortunately little he can do about his dreams.


	4. Chapter 4

489282.50 —  _present day_

Around midday, when the sun is high in the sky and Yuuri is sleeping blissfully, Phichit shakes Yuuri awake like a _goddamn_ savage and hisses, "Yuuri. Wake up. _Wake up_ , Katsuki!"

" _What_ ," Yuuri shoves his hands away and roams his hands around, searching for his glasses. "What's wrong with you?" He squints: sunlight is terrible and he wants nothing to do with it.

"Where do you keep the lotion?" "Get out of my tent." "I'm being _serious!_ "

Yuuri promptly muscles Phichit out of his way without meeting much resistance, and crawls out of the sleeping tent to find that the campsite is blanketed in dandelion fluff, which is cute and soft and pleasantly surprising for all of about thirty seconds before he starts having the most horrific allergic reaction he's ever experienced in his whole regrettable life.

"Also, _your_ tent? I thought we were closer than that." Phichit elbows him as they walk towards the medical tent.

"You had nowhere to stay and I took you in, in your time of need, and then you did _this_ to me—" Yuuri thrusts out his arm, which is rapidly reddening and basically on fire now.

"I would never do that to you," Phichit says, entirely too somber. "Anyway, some kind of…pollen volcano exploded nearby and half the team is having a reaction now, so nobody's doing any work and Seung-gil has had like, three aneurysms already."

"I can't treat that." Yuuri barges through the door flaps to the medical tent, and starts rummaging through the shelves for aloe vera, cortisone, whatever it is Phichit needs—"So what are we doing now?" Yuuri frowns.

"Cupid already sent down a rescue mission." Yuuri tosses Phichit a tub of E45, and Phichit just smears it haphazardly on his face. So obviously _that_ was extremely urgent. "They're gonna pack up the samples we collected in the cargo shuttle, but everyone on the research team is heading back for medical."

The heat makes Yuuri's skin protest even more, and Yuuri would ask Phichit if he minds if he takes his EVA suit off, only Yuuri's already taken his EVA suit off and he's pulling his scrubs on while Phichit pokes his head out of the medical tent.

In the communal marquee, people are eating late breakfasts and lounging in the shade, since Seung-gil is nowhere to be seen and the research mission has more or less been tipped on its head. Yuuri sits down with a bowl of sugar-free oatmeal and a tube of Benadryl across from Phichit, and peers around the impromptu mess hall.

There's a noticeable divide between those who were lucky enough to be immune to the pollen eruption, and those who weren't. For instance, Emil looks perfectly content and doesn't appear to be trying to conceal his delight as he scratches Michele's back with a hairbrush. Phichit has had no reaction—"Obviously I would have never gotten into botany if I had a pollen allergy." J.J. looks fine, but he's moping, and Yuuri can only assume it's because he's suffering withdrawal from Isabella. Seung-gil is obviously not a human being so Yuuri doesn't need to see him to know he's only disgruntled by the fact that his team have basically mutinied in favor of rubbing their backs up against tree bark.

He winces in sympathy to see Yuri Plisetsky wandering in, flushed and agitated but still fully zipped up in his EVA suit. Generally speaking Yuuri's not really supposed to waltz up to people who look terrible and ask if they want a prescription but—oh, Yuri is almost Minami's age and Yuuri _clearly_ has this weakness for socially stunted seventeen-year-olds who look up to the wrong people for the wrong reasons. Yuri's with Victor, who's no help at all since he's obviously never encountered a blemish in his whole, heavenly, beautiful life. His torso is milky pale and dewy with sweat and _perfect_. Yuuri knows because Victor's not wearing a shirt, like that's acceptable. That's clearly a health and safety hazard, and it's workplace inappropriate, and there are children—"You're drooling. Yuuri. Oh my god please."

Yuuri's gaze flits back to Phichit. His spoon is still hovering two inches from his mouth. "Uh."

"I thought you were gonna get up and start groping him," Phichit says, and Yuuri flicks a mushy, nutritious glob of oatmeal at him, because _that'll_ show him.

Yuuri brushes past the two of them as he's leaving with Phichit and drops some cortisone in Yuri's lap. Yuri flinches comically and glowers at him, while Victor gives him a glowy, grateful smile which comes very close to making Yuuri regret it.

Once they're outside, Phichit says, fanning himself, "He's so hot it actually disgusts me." Somehow all of Yuuri's friends are the worst people in the known universe.

 

*

 

The sun and the air and the humidity and everything else—are aggravating, so Yuuri tries to take a day nap in the tent. He's relentlessly uncomfortable, heat and sweat in combination tormenting his skin, and each time that he's tossing and turning, he's itching all over. He ends up half in tears trying not to claw at himself and it's just hellish, really, until Otabek calls.

Yuuri answers but opts out of a visual transmission, because, well. Otabek seems to find everything that's happening very interesting—which inexplicably used to turn Yuuri on but now it's just a nightmare—and when he inquires about Yuuri's symptoms, all he can do is whine, " _I'm dying, I'm dying, I'm dying_." Minami is with him, and positively elated that Yuuri's absence has been cut short.

"Hold on, Giacometti is requesting access to our call," Otabek says.

"It's not really a request when I'm in charge of surveillance," Chris chimes in, and from then on it's all, " _Hiiiiii_ , Nurse Katsuki, how are you then," while Otabek holds his head in his hands and Minami just stands there, looking excited to be existing while all of this is happening.  "Yuuri, you sound dreadful."

"I feel dreadful," Yuuri croaks.

"You poor poor poor thing," Chris says, with deep emotion. In the back of his mind Yuuri wonders if Chris is supposed to be steering the vessel, or commandeering the mission, instead of whatever this is. "Otabek should have never sent you to that terrible, savage place. As soon as we land I'm scooping you up and we'll get you into a comfy bed with some ice packs."

Immediately there's an uncomfortable silence that ensues until Otabek cuts in bluntly to say, "Actually, Yuuri will be in quarantine until his biometrics come back clean."

Yuuri buries his face in his pillow and maybe starts weeping, while Minami and Chris protest. As if they didn't _know_ , he thinks bitterly. "Chris," he wails, resurfacing. " _Please_ don't let them put me in quarantine."

Otabek looks like he's under the threat of having an emotion, with a facial expression that screams 'Come _on_ Yuuri do not make me deal with your totally weird, ill-advised _thing_ with Chris' but Yuuri, betrayed, ignores him and hangs up.

A few hours later, when Yuuri is passed out, Phichit disturbs his peace for the second time that day and informs him that Chris's team will land in around an hour. Yuuri's response is simply to give an anguished sneeze. Phichit clucks.

 

*

 

There are brief moments where Yuuri drifts back into consciousness, and he knows he is no longer on Iwatoka. He doesn't know where he is, or where he wants to be. He feels homesick.

 

*

 

Quarantine is quiet and cold and empty.

Yuuri wakes up in a room devoid of furniture, save for the bunk in which he's lying, and a single chair chained to the wall. He stumbles towards the bathroom, and the first thing he does is look in the mirror. Which is a mistake--his eyes are bloodshot, and his hair is greasy and tousled. His skin is red and still flushed with hives; his sinuses and the back of his throat have melted together to form an irritating abomination of pain. When he coughs it comes out scratchy and wet, and pain lances sharp into his chest.

This isn't how he thought he'd arrive back on _Cupid_. He hasn't even seen Minami yet, which— _he_ can live with that, but absence makes the heart grow fonder, so Minami's surely suffering by now. He'd seemed so happy when he'd found out Yuuri was coming home early. Later, he'll call him, when he doesn't look and sound like such an ordeal.

He wobbles out of the bathroom and doesn't recall there ever being a _roommate_ system in quarantine. But there's Victor, sitting on the top bunk with his legs dangling, watching him owlishly. Yuuri rubs his eyes and squints, sniffling all the while. No, he's still there. Okay, well, this is fine. "Do you know—" Yuuri sneezes "—how long we're in here for?"

"Until you stop looking terrible," Victor says, curt. Yuuri blinks, and rubs his temples. "I'm fine of course. Don't worry about me."

"I won't," Yuuri reassures him. Victor doesn't even have the good manners to look affronted like Yuuri wants him to—instead he looks like he's trying to hide a smile. What a jerk, Yuuri thinks, scratching absently at his neck. He's still in his scrubs. All of a sudden showering is at the forefront of his priorities, so he makes an abrupt U-turn back into the bathroom and locks the door behind him, which has the added benefit of getting Victor out of his sight.

His head pounds with a vengeance and he gives a tortured groan, shuddering against the bathroom door. He should find painkillers. Do they have access to data pads in quarantine? Can he make requests? He rattles his brain, trying to remember all the various, awful quarantine policies Otabek made him study when he was a horny nineteen-year-old--but his mind pulls a blank, sluggish and useless beneath the weight of hazy indifference. He yanks his shirt over his head and grimaces at the angry, raised streaks all down his torso, ant trails of shallow scabs where he scratched at his skin over and over again, trying not to bleed but still humanly unable to resist making things worse. Even now he has to drag his palms hard against his stomach, friction and heat relieving the itching for just a few seconds without breaking the skin.

He knows, of course, that he should take his shower cold. But when he stands beneath the hot spray of the shower, he forgets to do anything else, and he's wondering if he could possibly get away with jerking off—just, _really_ fast, because right now he feels awful, it's been far too long since he had any privacy, and he wants to get his mind off things.

(Halfway through, when he's already hard and his dick is leaking all over his fingertips, his mind drifts to the last time he resorted to this, mutely touching himself with Victor in the next room—years ago, after Victor had writhed hot in his lap, thighs wet and trembling, hips curling into his touch; it's terrible, but he's just trying to get off and the thought of it still makes him drool between his legs. So it does for now, and when he comes down from the endorphins and the oxytocin, he ends up punishing himself with a cold shower after all.)

There's no shampoo or anything in the shower stall, just a generic bar of soap that Yuuri doesn't trust not to make things worse for his skin, so he rinses off and steps out of the shower, dripping water everywhere, and then he has to deal with the fact that he doesn't have any spare clothes. His scrubs are soaked through and dirty on the bathroom floor, so putting those back on is out of the question. Shivering, he pads back out into the bunk room with a towel wrapped tight around his waist.

Victor's now sprawled out lazily on a chair, looking bored out of his mind. Yuuri almost feels bad for the fact that he has to be here, until Victor opens his stupid, _stupid_ mouth—"Could you at least _try_ to fix whatever's wrong with you instead of masturbating in the toilet so that we can get out of here faster?"

Yuuri flushes with humiliation. "I'm not being sick on purpose," he snaps. "You think I want to be here?"

The twitch at the corner of Victor's mouth is indecipherable, but it makes Yuuri bristle anyway. "The vice captain called and wanted to speak to you." Victor gestures towards a data pad on his lap, but makes no effort to offer it to Yuuri. Clutching the towel at his waist with one hand, Yuuri bends down and swipes the data pad away from him. He's not sure why Victor's so bored, if he had this all along.

At the foot of his bunk, he finds some plain briefs and—to his bemusement—a satin, cerulean sleeping robe, no doubt left for him by Chris. It's a favorite of his, something he'd bought as an indulgence when _Cupid_ had touched down on Haumea, a sparkling and frigid and expensive planet—the kind of place that prima ballerinas go to die, the kind of place that had burrowed all too easily through Yuuri's wallet and taken a devastating bite out of his savings. It's silky to the touch, glowing in the pale light, lovingly hand-embroidered with lotuses and hummingbirds. He must have left it in Chris's room after he'd last wandered up to his quarters—it still smells like peppermint oil when he lifts it to his face. Victor watches him with poorly concealed interest as he slips it on, and suddenly quarantine becomes that much more bearable. Hastily, he yanks the briefs up beneath the robe. Now that he's somewhat decent, he pushes the used towel out of his lap and reaches for the data pad.

Chris has two lines on _Cupid_ ; one is reserved for queries that he receives in his position as vice captain. The other is his personal line, to which Yuuri has long since gained access. He preens in the reflection of the data pad, brushing his hair back with his fingers, and Chris picks up after three rings.

"Yuuri!" Chris's sunny face filters into view. "Finally awake, I see. Sleep well?"

"I slept okay." Yuuri smiles weakly at him. "I'm not bothering you, am I?" He'd forgotten to check shiptime before calling, though luckily he doesn't seem to have disturbed Chris. If the sound of clacking keyboards and humming consoles is anything to go by, he's in the bridge, probably rubbing shoulders with snooty flight officers. Or maybe doing his job? Yuuri has no idea what Chris's responsibilities are. He's afraid to ask.

Chris shakes his head and tsks. "Never ever, _mon lapin_. I see you found my little gift." Chris winks at him. On the far side of the room, Victor chokes on air, coughing obnoxiously into his fist. Yuuri glances up at him for a moment, disdainful, but otherwise chooses to ignore him. "How are you feeling? Want me to send something up for you?"

Suddenly, Yuuri's acutely aware of the fact that he hasn't eaten since falling asleep on Iwatoka. He frowns. "I'm starving…can't you let me out already? It's just allergies, Chris. It's not communicable."

Chris coos, which doesn't make him hopeful. "You know policy, Yuuri—"

"—Since when do you listen to policy?" Yuuri scowls at him, petulant. Chris winces. There's a brief pause before Yuuri's eyes widen in shock. "Sorry! I'm sorry, I'm just—there's nothing to eat here and I feel terrible. It's not your fault."

"You know I'd rescue you in a heartbeat if I could," Chris sighs, a palm on his cheek. "I'll have everything you need sent down right away. But Yuuri, I do have something to be doing right now…"

Yuuri mumbles something grumpily under his breath. He's tired, he's getting itchy again, it hurts his throat to talk—he's in a _mood_ , what with Chris refusing to bend the rules to his wants and needs and Victor having the sheer audacity to exist near him. He hangs up on Chris—his only source of food and comfort—and flattens himself on the mattress, slinging an arm over his face and deflating. What does Chris even constitute as ' _everything you need_ '? Hot food? Silk pillows? God, Yuuri should have specified. He's going to end up with a vibrator. Hopefully Chris will send down a bottle of plum wine and Yuuri can drink himself through this nightmare dressed like a Victoria's Secret model.

"I can't _believe_ your vice captain talks to you like that," Victor says, because he obviously came from the seventh circle of hell to torment Yuuri. "I think everyone on this ship is in love with you."

Yuuri props himself up on his elbows, narrowing his eyes at him. "Stop making fun of me while I'm trying to sleep."

"You're oblivious." Victor waves him off airily. "Anyway, you can't go to sleep. You've been sleeping for hours and I'm bored."

"Okay." Yuuri takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, long-suffering that he is. "You can take the data pad. Listen to the radio or something."

"I don't want to listen to the _radio_ ," Victor says, nose scrunching up in distaste. He pauses, before tilting his head and relaxing into a smile. "I want to listen to _you_ ," he purrs, while Yuuri contemplates the merits of smothering himself with a pillow, right then and there. He can't, for the life of him, understand how Victor can go from being so impudent to so brazenly flirtatious.

"What were you thinking about in the shower?"

Yuuri does not look where he knows Victor is leering, shameless and far too proud of himself, because that would be unbearable. Granted, Yuuri can't exactly bring himself to discount Victor when he's the one who was fantasizing about him in the shower five minutes ago. His thighs are still twitching. He readjusts his robe. "Start with something else."

Victor pouts. "Fine. How come your vice captain gave you—" Victor points at Yuuri, and Yuuri assumes he's referring to the robe and not his full-body rash "—that?"

Yuuri looks down at himself, and plucks the fabric of his robe. "I bought it myself, actually. I guess I left it in Chris's room and he had it sent down."

Victor cocks an eyebrow. "You're not doing a very good job of convincing me you're not sleeping with him."

Truthfully Yuuri suspects he doesn't do a good job of convincing anyone that he's not sleeping with Chris. "I already told you," he balls up the towel and flings it in Victor's direction. "I haven't dated since college."

"Who said anything about dating?" Victor shrugs, kicking the towel away. "So malicious!" Victor teases, a smile breaking out on his face. "Let's talk about me—"

"—Yuri Plisetsky," Yuuri interrupts, surprising himself. He makes himself comfortable in his bunk, settling in for a long conversation. "How did you meet him?"

 

*

 

284274.27 —  _one year ago_

Yuri Plisetsky gets contracted with the Lux Aeternae fleet at the shining young age of sixteen, an impressive feat that makes him hard to talk to.

Victor doesn't notice that they're roommates until he wanders into his bathroom to find a child brushing his teeth with cheap toothpaste, forty minutes after Yuri arrives onboard. Part of him suspects that this is a ploy on upper management's part to try and thwart him in his efforts to despoil all of Engineering.

It's not. It's just that Victor's infamously long run without a roommate has come to an end, and he apparently didn't get the memo. Yuri Plisetsky is his new roommate, and he's even younger than Victor was when he first got sent up from Earth.

The first time they meet, they don't exchange words. Victor has no idea what to say. Nobody even told him this was happening, or if they did he clearly wasn't listening and that's their fault. Yuri acts like a cornered animal: for the first few days he's in Victor's room—their room, it's their room now—he's living out of his suitcase and doesn't even seem to want to unpack. Victor understands. When he'd first joined Lux, management hadn't wanted to assign someone so young to a full-time roommate. Now he supposes Lux is at full capacity, and neither of them can be afforded such luxuries anymore.

At some point Yuri comes down with something, just a generic space flu, and Victor feels this absolutely alien inclination to talk to him and—god forbid, maybe look after him a little bit. So he puts his hand on Yuri's forehead and makes a sympathetic noise, even though he's not entirely sure what the point of it is, then scampers down to the kitchens and grabs some of those sickeningly sweet, grape juice tetra paks and microwaveable soup before getting kicked out of the kitchens for _plundering_ , because everyone on this godforsaken fucking ship hates him because he's prettier than them.

He's never seen Yuri eat in their room, or in the mess hall. What if he's already starved to death before he makes it back to their room? What if it's not space flu, and he's just been letting his poor, poor baby roommate, who admittedly has never said a single word to him, literally waste away in the bunk beneath Victor's. This is exactly why nobody's ever been assigned as Victor's roommate and it's why he's speed walking back to his cabin, frantically trying to not spill tomato rice soup all over the ship's flawless gleaming interior.

"I brought you snacks!" Victor bursts through the door, beaming, and sets the tray down on Yuri's lap, dusting off his hands. Yuri looks up at him, bleary-eyed and bewildered, and also in desperate need of some lip balm. Victor will provide later, after Yuri has lavished grateful thanks upon him. "Do you want anything else? Ice pack? Television? Want to play with Makkachin?"

Yuri sniffles, and pokes a straw through a grape juicebox. "Makkachin?" His voice is hoarse, but it's the first time Victor's ever heard it, so it's nice to hear anyway. At the sound of her name being called, Makkachin pads out of her blanketed domain beneath Yuri's bunk, and Yuri flinches when she jumps onto his bed, tongue lolling. "You have a _dog?_ " Yuri gapes at Makkachin. He doesn't seem scared, to Victor's great relief. "I thought they weren't allowed…" 

"They're not, really," Victor says. "It'll be our little secret."

 

*

 

853982.89 —  _present day_

"Why did you get fired, again?" Yuuri furrows his brows. "Because of Makkachin, or because you're a terrible pilot?"

"Don't be rude!" Victor chastises. "I'll have you know I served my contract to completion and didn't renew it."

"So both."

"Yes, both," Victor relents, with an easy smile. He's sitting on the floor by Yuuri's bunk now, looking up at him. Yuuri has rolled onto his side to face him, his robe pulled tight across his chest but not doing much to cover up the fading hives on his bare legs. Since they've been talking, hot food has arrived and made Victor much more bearable to be around—Yuuri's nursing a styrofoam cup of spiced wine while Victor polishes off a plate of hot wings. Chris also sent ibuprofen, more blankets, and some chocolate truffles which Yuuri assumes are there because Chris is begging his forgiveness. Victor has already stolen the truffles, which doesn't bother Yuuri as long as all he can taste is mucus.

"I can't believe you were so… _nice_ …to Yuri." Yuuri rolls onto his back, spilling the last of his wine on Victor, who complains minimally enough that Yuuri can ignore him. He hiccups. "You're actually horrible," he says, turning his head to squint down at Victor. "Victor. You are so mean."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Victor says mildly. He pushes the disposable dinnerware out of his lap, and leans back against the wall of Yuuri's bunk, facing away from him. Yuuri prods the whorl of his hair, and Victor's shoulders tense. " _Yuuri_ ," he whines. Some things never change, he supposes.

"Stupid anyway," Yuuri mutters without much malice. "You're self-conscious about your appearance and not—" he yanks on a tuft of Victor's hair, not unlike an infatuated schoolboy "—living out of your dirty jet for months without a job."

Victor swats his hand away. "I don't know if it's as bad as mentoring poor, lonely teenagers in my room," Victor says sardonically, punctuating the word 'mentoring' with air quotes.

"Oh _please_. You think I'm sleeping with everyone," Yuuri hisses. He truly doesn't understand anything that Victor thinks of him. _Victor's_ the one who won't shut up about his string of lovers, but Yuuri diplomatically doesn't mention that. "At least my room isn't covered in pin-ups and other people's lingerie."

Victor turns to face him, incensed. "Okay, Yuuri, I'm _so_ sorry I'm not still heartbroken after we broke up five years ago. You win and I'm a disgusting sex deviant. I'm guessing I should have worn a chastity belt until—"

"— _Victor_."

Victor goes quiet, his exasperation fading into guilt. Yuuri's hands are in fists; he's curled himself up into something more compact, and he's shifted to face away from Victor. His shoulders are trembling. Victor purses his lips and rises shakily to his feet, climbing up into his bunk without another word.

Yuuri has his heart sitting three sizes too big in his throat. His whole body is too hot and too sore like he's sweating out a fever, but he doesn't dare move, the inexplicable urge to be silent and unintrusive and to sit still and stop causing problems for once in his life pinning him to the mattress. He screws his eyes shut, and tears run down the side of his face and he can't help but be reminded of the fact that Minami cries like this because of Yuuri all the time, and it's so _stupid_ , _Yuuri's_ so stupid—sometimes he just rolls his eyes and snaps his medical gloves on anyway, tools at the ready.

He thinks he could never see Victor again and it would still be too soon, but now they're locked in a tiny room together for god knows how long until some shitty computer finally decides Yuuri's fit for duty, and he's given free reign to continue living like he does—quiet and sedate and entirely replaceable. Utterly cool-headed and utterly lonely.

*

 

There's something he misses, shaped like a gap in him and strangely elusive. He keeps meeting Victor at the intersection where it grows, in the middle of nowhere. There are some meetings so strange they can't possibly be coincidental; two people who have no business talking to one another having a peaceful conversation in the middle of a wheat field—and then there's Victor and Yuuri, sitting in a tree with their names scratched into the bark, eclipsed in a heart—alone and together in the dark and glistening cosmos.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ["I like the fact that you can have people who have never met or never will meet and they have this little intersection," he said. "Two people who have no business talking to one another."](http://articles.latimes.com/1999/sep/18/news/mn-11495) — "Reaching Way Out"
> 
> ["There are desert sunflowers and dune evening primrose, sand verbena, ghost flowers, monkey flowers and wild Canterbury bells. The ocotillo and beavertail cactus are beginning to bloom."](https://www.npr.org/2017/03/17/520496783/california-deserts-in-super-bloom-thanks-to-a-wet-winter) — Mandalit Del Barco, "California Deserts In 'Super Bloom' Thanks To A Wet Winter"
> 
> forget to mention this last time, but iwatoka's name comes from itokawa which is an asteroid that i chose because it's [shaped like a dick.](https://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Page/ITOKAWA/target) also i am literally right now realizing that i spelt itokawa wrong and evidently just…ran with it?


	5. Chapter 5

Yuuri's dreams are obscure and disjointed, the junction between sleep and wakefulness nebulous and difficult to find. It's too quiet to sleep easy in quarantine, particularly since it's essentially a medical ward and an anechoic chamber, rolled into one. A disorienting liminal space fitted with all the unsettling hallmarks and safety measures of a prison cell.

Early in the day, Yuuri presses a hand to his cheek and feels grainy stubble there graze his hand for the first time in months. This does not suit him.

Victor isn't humming anymore; he's either asleep, or he's finally given up on trying to make the two of them feel less alone. This also does not suit him.

He wants to say something to return the favor, and go once again from bitter silence to bitter messing around. But he knows Victor only gets unfortunately more blasé without his beauty sleep, so Yuuri forgoes disturbing him. For now.

Some stupid, sentimental part of Yuuri wants to watch him sleep. He wonders what else has stayed the same throughout the years. Yuuri used to have night sweats in college, infrequent and unexplained. He would've never shared a bed with Victor, only he'd set up a mattress on the floor of his room and Victor—after twenty minutes or maybe an hour, depending on his self-control that night—would climb into Yuuri's bed and wail, citing neglect and unbearable loneliness. He'd bury his face in Yuuri's exposed collar and Yuuri had liked that his lips fell apart when he was dreaming, even if it meant waking up covered in drool. He's never seen Victor sleeping alone (observing him whilst comatose doesn't count). He has no idea what it looks like. Maybe it's not a naturally occurring phenomenon. Victor, on a very fundamental level, doesn't appear built to be left all alone.

Lying in bed for as long as he does is physically painful, so Yuuri scrolls through messages on the data pad. Phichit has already been cleared for duty, along with J.J. and Emil. Yuuri wonders if that means their roommates are now alone in quarantine. There's not a trace of doubt in his mind that he'd rather share a quarantine chamber with Victor than occupy one by himself, even if Victor is—you know, _Victor_ —his spacey highschool sweetheart turned…whatever Victor is to him now. Even if Victor makes him angry enough that he bursts at the seams and starts crying, and then shuts up and can't speak for fear of the shame of it all—that's a better feeling than Yuuri's own brand of brooding and isolation, magnified ten thousand times by quarantine's deathly, sterile quiet.

Minami's babysitting Makkachin, and has been doing an admirable job although he's given up all pretenses of trying to train him. Phichit sends him photos of one of the empty cabins on the engineering deck. It should be underwhelming, except Phichit is planning to completely overhaul the ship's botanical gardens, and he's invited Yuuri to come and help whenever he wants. It's a stupid comfort, but Yuuri's wanted _Cupid_ to be growing fresh produce for years now. It's a long-running and affectionate joke on _Cupid_ , that Yuuri Katsuki wants you in bed by seven, and no he doesn't care that you're thirty-six. It's how he got that stupid 'Nurse Katsuki' nickname despite his speciality in prosthesis of all things. ' _He'll cut off your leg and then tell you you're bleeding because you don't eat enough vegetables_ '—well no longer! No more spoon-feeding smug patients blended spinach in the care ward, because he's going to eject every packet of dehydrated lettuce on this ship out into airlock, never to be seen again except by tiny kids lying on their dewy front lawns with expensive telescopes and too much free time.

Yuuri's parents used to tend to a vegetable patch behind the onsen, long before they had Mari. " _Mari wasn't our first baby, you know,_ " his mother had said, fondly cradling a perfect cabbage, " _but she was certainly the noisiest._ " Yuuri would sit on a wooden stool and watch as his mother puttered around beneath rain clouds with her cheap tin watering can, wearing her flimsy straw hat and threadbare apron. Sometimes she would keep a chicken near the patch and let it roam there for several hours, a different one each time. Yuuri, fresh out of preschool in his sweat-damp and pollen-dusted uniform, would always kneel down in the soft earth and run his clumsy fingers through its downy feathers and coo. There are photographs of him shoved under his mattress, as a four-year-old child with a wide, toothy smile on his face, rubbing his chubby face against a poor chicken helpless to escape his loving embrace. Minami has never seen them and Yuuri might show them to him one day, if he ever manages to forget his birthday.

Yuuri would always cry when the chicken inevitably vanished from the garden, sitting at his mother's feet while she ran a comb through his hair. " _This one ran away too? Yuuri! You're scaring them off!_ " she'd chide, and Yuuri would protest, looking up at her with shiny-wet eyes and his mouth wobbling, stuttering out something defensive before succumbing to the overwhelmig guilt and burying his face in her long, dusty skirt—the pure shame of it all eating away at his insides, his mother gently patting his back and subtly shaking her head all the while. " _Look what these awful birds are doing to my poor baby. Will some teriyaki make you feel better?"_

And just like that he's tearing up over a picture of fertilizer, thinking about his mother and the way she was before he went up, berry-sweet and too young to let her youngest disappear forever without so much as a kiss on the forehead.

He thinks Victor might be stirring in the bunk above him, so he cups a hand over his mouth and takes a deep, shuddery breath.

It's been years since she would've been able to contact him. And it's not like he ever tried to write. Next time _Cupid_ touches down, then—Yuuri will try to get something to her. Maybe it'll be sooner than later. His heart breaks each time he remembers that she probably thinks she'll never hear from him again, and there's nothing she can do about it.

He could write about Minami, who Yuuri thinks might have gone to the same highschool that he did. Everything that reminds him of home, like the hot springs on Iwatoka, and the new gardens on the ship. About Makkachin, and his striking resemblance to Vicchan.

Would she remember Victor? Yuuri remembers mentioning him to her enough times back in college that she started packing gifts for him too, in her occasional care packages, these glittery hair scrunchies that Mari won at the arcade, and golden bangles that caught his mother's eye when she was wandering aimlessly through street markets. (" _He's not a magpie, you know. It's embarrassing giving him some of these things…_ " " _I mean, I wish you'd told me Victor was a boy's name, but he doesn't seem to mind._ ")

He'd neglected to mention that Victor was spending a lot of time with his hands up Yuuri's shirt, but she'd known that they were friends—or at the very least, something closely resembling it. Maybe she'd be happy to see him again. His mother would think it was an exciting coincidence. Call it a good omen; the strings of fate aligning just for him. Yuuri remains undecided on the matter; he's long since learned that the strings of fate like to fuck with him.

Later, a foil-wrapped food package tumbles out of the automated dispenser, and Yuuri knows it hasn't been commissioned by Chris when he finds nothing else within it besides a couple of milk cartons and a packet of raisins within the breakfast package. He leaves it discarded on the chair and falls back into bed, disappointed. Yuuri also elects to discard time as a concept—because space is more his thing and that's why he's out here, having a ball in goddamn purgatory. He drinks wine straight out of the bottle, cheek smushed against his hand, staring at the wall.

There's just one window in the bunk room, small and unassuming. Through it, a dusty shaft of starlight beams a glowing panel onto Yuuri's face. And then he's half-asleep again, summer-warm and sweetened, tufts of oil black hair sticking to his sweaty forehead while he mumbles through alcohol-soaked dreams.

When Victor wakes up, Yuuri can hear his lazy stretching and blankets shuffling, a deep sigh and a long yawn as Victor climbs out of his bunk. Yuuri cracks open one eye and sees him sitting with his back against the wall and his ankles crossed, slurping noisily on a carton of milk. He looks dishevelled, the lines of his body loose and his hair all rumpled. Victor cocks an eyebrow at him when he sees the wine bottle under the bed. "Oh, Yuuri. Drinking already?"

Yuuri wrinkles his nose and rolls to face the wall while Victor tuts at him.

"That is terrible," Victor tells him.  Yuuri buries his face in his sleeve and huffs.

"Are you not even talking to me now?" Victor asks, boyishly peeved. Yuuri says nothing. If this is what it takes to finally wind Victor up, then he'll do it. He can see it now: Victor sulking in the corner of their shared space, arms folded across his chest and pretending he's above this. The way he did back in college, only now he's no longer allowed to crawl into Yuuri's bed and try and sweet talk him into paying him any attention. "Fine then," Victor says, puffed up like it's not fine at all and actually Yuuri's committing a war crime. Still, he's sipping angrily from a milk carton; something Yuuri used to do when he was an impassioned three-year-old tottering around a playpen, so it's difficult to take him seriously.

They don't continue like that for very long. Victor makes a point of sitting in front of the bathroom door like he's a guard dog, and they still don't talk about it, because they can only act so much like adults until one of them inevitably reverts back to silent treatments, and cold shoulders, and ' _God, don't even talk to me!_ '

Yuuri tosses and turns in bed, until he finally sits up on the edge of the mattress. He rubs his knees together, desperately in need of a shower and a toilet break. His head is warm and he's braver than he ought to be, what with his bones wet in wine and his ex-boyfriend simmering at him just two metres away. He staggers to his feet and Victor watches him, warily.

Yuuri walks up to Victor the way you walk towards the eye of a hurricane.

"I can't live like this," Victor says, rising to his feet—which he did not have to do, because now Yuuri has to deal with Victor peering high-mindedly down at him like he's some kind of sleazy, hot take on the Immaculate Conception.

" _Victor_ ," Yuuri whines, and he's accidentally doing that thing where he turns 'Victor' into a four-syllable word, which is far more than Victor deserves. "Can't you just let me—" Yuuri tries to slip past him, but Victor grabs his wrist and presses Yuuri's hand against his own heart. Like Yuuri's supposed to be able to make out the sound of Victor's internal suffering through the faint cadence of his heartbeat. Yuuri squints at him. "You're so dramatic," he complains.

"You and your cold heart," Victor laments. "I'm not like you. I'm delicate. I'm fragile."

"You're in the way."

"I need you to talk to me. I hate this. I hate seeing you like this." Victor waves his free hand around to demonstrate, and Yuuri blinks at him, his head gone cloudy. "But first we should brush your teeth." Victor smiles like a wolf, eyes twinkling in all kinds of devastating ways, then ushers him into the bathroom while Yuuri's brain falters on ' _we?_ '

Victor stands them in front of the mirror, squeezing the sides of Yuuri's shoulders, and all Yuuri can see is Victor's obnoxiously white smile and his own unkempt appearance, slightly blurry without his glasses. This particular setup screams some kind of impending transformation, but right now Victor isn't equipped with his tweezers or his heated eyelash curlers, and between the two of them they don't even have a razor, because obviously quarantine is such a miserable hellhole that it's a blatant safety hazard.  So instead of trying to beautify Yuuri, Victor stands behind him and brushes his thumb down Yuuri's five o'clock shadow while Yuuri roots around in the medicine cabinet for a toothbrush.

"You would never grow a beard, would you?" Victor asks, unnervingly tentative.

"Um. I don't think so," Yuuri says. He turns his head to look up at Victor. "Why? You'd like that?" See, this is why he's not supposed to talk to Victor, ever. By now he's surely given Victor ideas—like, ' _Yuuri would grow a beard if I liked it_ ' and ' _Yuuri doesn't really think I'm as unbearable as he says_ ' and ' _Yuuri Katsuki would literally get on his hands and knees and crawl, over broken glass, with his fly open, to get my dick wet._ '

Victor looks at him, taken aback. "No. God no." Scratch that. He's downright appalled. Yuuri almost feels bad for asking until he remembers himself. "Never do that," Victor says, in such a plying way that Yuuri realizes he's probably never going to be able to now—not with Victor looking at him like he'd shrivel up and die if Yuuri so much as considered it.

While he's brushing his teeth, Victor starts messing with Yuuri's hair, brushing it out of his face with his fingers, making a studious inspection as he does. His chest is pressed warm against Yuuri's back, and Yuuri can't do much to escape…whatever Victor is doing. Being a pest. Not leaving him alone. Getting too close for comfort and sticking his hands where they don't belong. Business as usual, in other words.

"You had your hair like this the first time I saw you," Victor says, pinning Yuuri's hair back from his forehead. "You looked more…refined. I didn't recognize you at first."

Yuuri spits into the sink and wipes his mouth. "I know." He pauses. He can see Victor watching him curiously in the mirror. "I wanted to see how long it would take you. To figure it out, I mean. But of course, Minami…" Yuuri makes a vague hand gesture that honestly doesn't mean anything, but the general gist is that Minami is a walking talking crying disruption, generating waves of discord wherever he goes.

"In my defense," Victor starts, meaning he's about to say something which is the polar opposite of redeeming, "I'd just woken up from a coma and there was a _very_ cute nurse in my room distracting me."

"I don't think there was." Yuuri side-eyes Victor as he presses closer. "I think there may have been a doctor."

Victor just laughs, his breath hot and too close to his ear, while Yuuri's stomach drops a few dangerous inches lower.

"Okay then. A very handsome doctor." Victor rests his cheek against Yuuri's temple. "You know, as soon as I saw you I knew we'd get along," Victor murmurs, and it's a shameless lie, forever the kind that are Yuuri's perfect undoing. Victor rubs his shoulders, soothing away tension at the same time he's causing it. Yuuri's back arches into it like a reflex, his grip tightening on the edge of the sink, pushing away even though the pull always tastes so much sweeter. Victor presses his thumbs gently into the base of Yuuri's neck and says, "I knew we weren't strangers. You didn't like me the first moment you saw me. That never happens."

And just like that his heart is boiling over, his knees are trembling, and Yuuri gets more feverish with every breath he takes. "Stop it," Yuuri says, too breathy and too riled up. Victor's hands drag down the length of his arms, tapering off at his fingertips. Yuuri turns to face him with his chin lowered, the sink jutting out against the small of his back. This way he doesn't have to watch himself fall apart. "You're insufferable."

Victor just looks at him like he's finally satisfied.

"Believe me—" Victor smiles at him over his shoulder on his way out "—you're just as bad as I am."

 

*

 

After showering, Yuuri does a cursory inspection of his body and comes to the conclusion that, a) he's surely reached a stage where Larissa no longer has any excuse to keep him in quarantine, and b) he's not wearing any clothes, which is a problem.

His robe is on the floor, wet with tears and shower water and all the nervous sweating he did when Victor commenced with his spontaneous fondling. His boxers are similarly ruined, and yesterday he threw the only towel he had at Victor, so that's outside and probably wet on the floor too. Yesterday he had Chris to fall back on—wonderful, amazing, benevolent Chris who Yuuri is going to sleep with one day be it out of gratitude or pity—but Chris has more important things to be doing than waiting on Yuuri hand and foot.

He cracks open the door, just enough so that he can poke his head out and ask, "Do we have any spare clothes?"

Victor looks up from where he's sitting on Yuuri's bunk. "You know as well as I do that this place is a wasteland. Do you want to call your…vice captain?" Victor says the word ' _vice captain_ ' like it doesn't fit properly in his mouth. Like Chris isn't also his vice captain.

Yuuri chews on his lower lip, shifting from foot to foot. "Can you…call him for me?" He sounds pitifully weak. "Anything is fine. You can ask for more food too, if you want."

"Oh dear," Victor says, walking towards the bathroom and almost sending Yuuri into a full-blown panic before he realizes Victor is only handing him a blanket. Yuuri gratefully accepts it, ducking back behind the door so Victor's voice is muffled when he says, "You shouldn't treat your boy toys so cruel if you're just going to hide away afterwards."

Yuuri lets out a noise of frustration. He walks back out into the bunk room with the blanket wrapped around his shoulders and his hair a mess of wet cowlicks. Victor lets out a low whistle. Yuuri  sits down on his bunk, shivering while Victor paces the room with the data pad, presumably tapping out a message to Chris.

"Can you ask about my biometrics too?" Yuuri asks.

"Sick of me already?" Victor glances up from the data pad, then plops down next to him. "I asked Chris about getting you some clothes. In the meantime," Victor says, making a show of looking him up and down,unable to keep the stupid grin off his face, "do you want to play strip poker?"

Yuuri scowls. "I want you to get off my bed and stop driving me up the wall." He'd smack Victor if it didn't mean he'd end up losing the blanket anyway. He's terrible at card games.

"Oh, I see how it is," Victor says, expression souring. "Scandalous flirting in the workplace is reserved for you and your vice captain only. And also everyone else on the crew except me."

It takes herculean effort on his part not to laugh at Victor's indignation. "You can chase tail all you want." Yuuri elbows him gently. "Just leave me out of it." 

Victor shoots him a distinctly unimpressed look and then heaves a dramatic, long-suffering sigh, like they're a couple of kids in grade school and Victor is passing him extremely important secret messages under their shared desk but Yuuri keeps mistaking his crumpled up notes for garbage. "You're killing me."

" _I'm_ killing you?" Yuuri's eyes widen. He'd follow up on that accusation, except the data pad buzzes in Victor's lap. Victor doesn't even seem to notice what's happening until Yuuri says, "Oh." He stares down at the data pad.

"'Oh?'" Victor repeats, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever Yuuri's just read, but he's already snatched the data pad away. He doesn't want to admit why he does it, but he appreciates that he could've been more subtle about it.

Pressed against his chest is an update from Larissa, informing them that they've both been cleared for duty and are free to return to their regular schedules.  Quite frankly Yuuri has no idea what Victor gets up to in his free time, besides sitting and looking pretty in his for-hire jet from time to time, but he's certain that it's exceptionally more interesting than Yuuri's regular schedule. 

Yuuri spends at least three hours a day running around the ship in his polka-dot mint and white scrubs, on house calls for crew members who cannot interrupt their work to attend check-ups. He gets invited to conferences to quietly perform routine maintenance on senior flight officers' prosthetics while they grumble about things that are so above Yuuri's pay grade it's sort of degrading. The highlight of his day is occasionally chewing out Chris in front of the whole bridge for being hungover and ringing Yuuri up just so he can bring him a glass of water, while Chris flashes him various coquettish looks.

It should be no wonder as to why he never writes home; the only dignified aspect of any of it is that he gets paid a six-figure salary.

He's not going to wake up to half a bottle of wine for breakfast and a stupid, half-baked fight with Victor that he doesn't even care about anymore. In fact he's probably not going to drink at all the next few months since the last time he did, it ended up with Victor rounding him up in the bathroom to try and help, only instead of doing anything helpful he whispered sultry things in Yuuri's ear and played with his hair. As a result, Yuuri had come out of the bathroom even more dazed than before, and having to confront the fact that maybe—just maybe—he'd been playing hard to get and Victor was going to give him a heart attack for it.

Yuuri sighs just a little bit and puts down the data pad.

"We're…free to go. The chamber's no longer sealed." He has no explanation for the way he deflates as he says it. All the agitation he's been stockpiling during his time with Victor tumbles out of him in one fell swoop, replaced with something intangible and disappointing.

After a beat of silence, Victor says, "So I'll finally be leaving you alone then."

_I don't want you to leave me alone_ , Yuuri thinks, because he's stupid.

"I guess I…won't get to talk to you anymore," he murmurs. Oh, how he's stupid.

There's a brief pause, during which Victor doesn't seem able to comprehend what's happening. It's as if Yuuri just confessed something so astronomically incompatible with Victor's timeline that it may have ripped a hole in the heavenly silk of time and space.

"I can't believe this," Victor says. Yuuri clenches his fingers in the bed sheets and his face gets warmer, the way everything is getting warmer, like he's hurtling towards the sun, getting closer to the stars. Victor presses their knees together, and shuffles ever closer in a futile attempt to get Yuuri to look him in the eye instead of staring resolutely down at the floor.

Yuuri clutches his invisible pearls, holds on tight to his lucky stars—all two of them—and desperately hopes that history won't repeat itself.

"I can't believe this was all it took for you to just admit you like me," Victor muses.

Yuuri snaps his head up so fast he probably kills off what little brain cells he has left. "I don't!" he protests. "That's not what I said—"

"Yuuri, Yuuri, _Yuuri_ ," Victor breathes, a dreamy expression on his too-close face. "You can't take it back _now_." He hooks his fingers beneath Yuuri's chin and pulls him in closer, starry-eyed and awestruck. "Oh, darling, to think that even after all these years you're still head over heels for—why are you running away?"

Yuuri is currently scrambling to get away from Victor and all his sickening loveliness before he can develop some kind of mysterious heartache. "I have to—God, I'm leaving," he manages to stutter, as if it wasn't already obvious.

"Wearing a blanket?"  _Goddamnit_. Victor tilts his head to the side and smiles like Yuuri's being charming. "How eccentric."

Well, Yuuri's already committed to it now. He can come back for the robe later, when Victor isn't laughing at him.

(It's not hard to believe he used to think the sound of it could make the moon bloom.)

"I have work to do," is Yuuri's justification for stumbling towards the exit and tripping over his blanket, when what he should be doing is talking about his _feelings_.

"So busy all the time. You're like a little honeybee." Victor sighs, slumping back and sulking. Yuuri promises to himself that it's the last time he looks over his shoulder. "You never have time for me anymore!"

Yuuri hasn't heard those words since he was eighteen, back when it was less of a tease and more of a threat, followed by either of them storming out of the room or slamming a car door—or better yet, stomping on a rain-soaked bouquet until the pavement was smudged with rose petals and people in the street were slowing down to stare at them. When after a fight he'd wake up in the morning to find Victor asleep on top of him, all cried out and docile again. The kind of thing nobody expects to find, like sunflowers in the desert. Yuuri used to comb his fingers through his tangled hair, Victor looking so angelic bathed in the early light that it'd be cruel to remember what they'd even been arguing about.

He'd almost believed that Victor was a mirage, an elaborate scheme of pink smoke and pearl-handled mirrors, until he got closer and found the apache plumes, the dune evening primrose, the golden boy drowsing amongst the wildflowers and then all at once dragging him down for a kiss like was starving for it. Yuuri's hands would come away with stardust every time he touched him. At first it would feel like stealing, and then suddenly it would feel like something else.

He leaves the quarantine chamber, pink-cheeked and feeling like he's burning up, and cannot believe there was ever a time when he thought he had nothing to write home about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 10:31 pm - :catpaw:: actually no yeah he'll just walk away in the blanket. it's not a plot hole now it's a quirk  
> 10:31 pm - hex: thats the spirit


	6. Chapter 6

Outside of quarantine, everything is stimulating, an infliction of shifting light and motion. All of a sudden Yuuri is able to pace for more than five steps without hitting a dead-end. But moving is good; he feels strangely charged.

When he gets back to his cabin, Makkachin is curled up at the foot of his bunk, and Minami is nowhere to be found, in which case Yuuri must have been cleared in the middle of the work day. Once he's inside he lets the quarantine bedsheet fall to the floor, detestable thing that it is—one of these days he'll get around to setting it on fire.

He doesn't feel the balmy warmth of coming home. As it turns out, he doesn't have time to enjoy it anyway.

"Good morning, Officer Katsuki. The vice-captain would like for you to meet with him in the dining hall," Larissa says.

Oh. "Tell him I'm...indisposed."

There is a half-beat of silence which, Yuuri has learnt, means Larissa has probably had this same conversation sixteen times today already, and she's sick of being lied to by abominable human beings with measly three-digit IQs.

"If you're feeling unwell, you may request the presence of a medical officer in your quarters." Larissa continues serenely, "However my biometrics indicate that you are in apt condition. Should I inform the vice-captain that you will not meet with him on account of impertinence?"

Yuuri furrows his brows. "Do you talk to every officer like this or is it just me?"

Smoothly, Larissa says, "I emulate that to which you are most responsive."

He shudders. The artificial intelligence with an I.Q. of six thousand currently steering a starship the size of a small city thinks he 'responds' to throwaway degradation.

The door to his cabin slides open without his say so, as if to not-so-subtly beckon him. He bristles. "Has anyone ever told you how sensitive you are?" Yuuri asks, rooting through his medicine cabinet for a razor. He's gone for _four_ days and Minami starts squeezing toothpaste from the top of the tube like an actual caveman.

"No."

"Good," Yuuri mutters under his breath.

He makes his way down to the mess hall in a soft t-shirt and old sweats, an outfit which wouldn't be deemed suitable for a one-on-one meeting with the second highest-ranking officer aboard the ship if Chris wasn't totally whipped.

Makkachin trots after him, and it makes his heart ache a little. On the way to the mess hall he looks down at her and almost breaks down into a heartfelt tirade about how she should leave Victor and run away with him, and they'll live happily ever after in his bunk, twenty meters down the hall from Victor's cabin. He does not break into said tirade but makes a mental note to tell Larissa that Makkachin will henceforth be granted twenty-four-seven clearance to his cabin.

Chris has apparently not been informed of Makkachin's existence yet, so he glances between Yuuri and Makkachin several times as they're approaching, like he's unsure of whether he should be playing the spontaneously responsible vice captain or laidback friend with benefits. He settles for the latter, thankfully.

Yuuri sits down across him and Chris gives him a warm smile. Between them they only have a couple of coffees and upon discovering this Makkachin promptly wanders away to beg for more appealing scraps.

Chris looks tired and sulky, so Yuuri doesn't ask how he's feeling. Instead he lets Chris catch him up on gossip that Yuuri pretends he's above caring about. Chris tells him that Lilia had a whole scene where she walked onto the bridge and screamed, " _WHAT ON EARTH IS GOING ON AROUND HERE?_ " because Phichit had apparently smuggled back some kind of hideous space gerbil from Iwatoka and was showing it off to a truly distraught Yuri Plisetsky, and J.J. was showing Isabella his patented list of potential baby names in plain view of the whole bridge.

"So far the top contender is J.J.J., which I think stands for Jean-Jacques Junior," Chris says, while Yuuri stares dizzily into space, uncomprehending.

"She…knows?"

Chris snorts. "Of course she knows. It's Lilia." He chances a glance at Yuuri's horrified expression and sighs. "You thought nobody was going to notice? She was walking around looking like she was hiding a watermelon in her EVA suit."

Yuuri rubs his temples. "So what's going to happen to her?"

"You're sweet," Chris says. "I suppose it's up to her. I can't imagine choosing this place to raise a child, but…well. Nobody would ask me. Ah, how could I forget—about quarantine. I'm sorry you were in there for as long as you were. How was it?"

Yuuri scowls into his empty coffee. "Dirty. Bad. Why did I—why is there a roommate system in _quarantine?_ "

"Why, was it really so bad?" At Yuuri's grimace, he clucks. "You were saddled with the pilot. I don't know, I think he's charming."

"We used to date," Yuuri mumbles, and Chris's jaw goes slack. Naturally, he's intrigued. After all, this is the first he's heard of Yuuri's recherché love life. "And we didn't…it break off easy."

"Why is this the first I'm hearing of this? Is it because he's a pilot? They all have that _thing_ going on, don't they," Chris muses. "I didn't know you liked the bad boys, Yuuri. Did he used to put you up on his motorcycle and make you wrap your arms around his waist? How chic."

"It wasn't like that." He doesn't mean for it to come out as rueful as it does.

Chris pats his head, cooing in sympathy.

After that, they walk back to Yuuri's bunk, because Chris has meetings all day long and Yuuri can't bring himself to say much more about Victor than that he's irreparably different now.

“It’s wonderful to have you back,” Chris says once they're standing outside Yuuri's door, lifting Yuuri's hand and planting a kiss to his knuckles. “Feel free to take the day off.”

Yuuri rolls his eyes and goes to get dressed for work like Chris knows he will.

 

*

 

Sort of like in the way that little ducklings do, Minami's long since imprinted on Yuuri, because Yuuri is too hospitable for his own good and he has this awful tendency to coddle Minami in his own subtle way.

Not five seconds after he arrives in the medbay, Minami crashes into him like a meteor and sends them both sprawling to the floor, while the rest of the medbay looks on as Yuuri frantically tries to pry himself from Minami’s grasp. This includes the entirety of the waiting room, which just adds to the flaming embarrassment, since Yuuri’s in Nurse Mode (Maximum Efficiency), and there’s already an ongoing joke with the nurses that the model of the human skeleton in the medbay is not actually a model, but rather a patient who's waiting for Minami to get around to helping them. Yuuri has always defended Minami on that front and this is what he gets.

Otabek does not check them for head injuries. He just stands there, sternly disgraced, watching his first officer wrestle with a med student, one screaming bloody murder and the other spilling tears of joy all over the previously pristine marble flooring.

“Are you done.” Obviously Otabek is not asking if they are done but rather announcing that they _are_ done, forever, and also if he ever has to watch this buffoonery again then they’re both getting put on septic tank taste-testing duty.

Finally, Yuuri stands up and dusts off his scrubs, scrambling for the last remaining traces of his dignity. Minami gets to his feet. He's settled now; he never had any dignity anyway.

So Yuuri clears his throat and not-so-gently nudges Minami out of the way, and follows Otabek into his office, half-expecting a scene straight out of a cheap porno to ensue where Otabek hitches Yuuri into his firm lap and tells him he's been a very, _very_ bad boy and now he has to be punished for it and "—also, we're running low on a few medical supplies, so I need you to take a flight down to a pharmacy near here."

Yuuri blinks, shaken out of his fantasy. "Excuse me?"

Otabek gives him an exasperated look. "I've already sent you a list of things we need in the pharmacy. Your flight is booked for tomorrow afternoon."

"Oh. And my appointments…they're…"

"What's gotten into you?" Otabek frowns. "I just told you all of this."

Yuuri laughs awkwardly, shoulders hunched up. "Sorry, sorry. I'm having a weird day. It's…it's quarantine." He's lying through his teeth. Being humiliated in front of Otabek just happens to activate the lizard part of his brain that thinks Otabek threatening to put him on desk duty is the most sexually invigorating thing that could ever happen to him. "I'll get started right away!" He says and then, for some reason, he _salutes_ , because apparently he's the biggest idiot loser in the universe now. Otabek actually blushes, which is _amazing_ , but Yuuri can't stand around and savour it, because he's a bad person and he made Otabek have to deal with having a _feeling_ , like some kind of barn animal. He has to leave. He has to go stand in the corner.

He stands in the corner of his own office then, trying to figure out what it was exactly that Otabek was actually saying. According to Larissa, he has exactly twelve requests from various crew members requesting prosthetic repair, and a personal message from Isabella complaining about hallucinations. _There is a very handsome man following me around all hours of the day. Please advise_ , she writes, and Yuuri laughs. She's scheduled a check-up. He assumes that this is just her way of informing him that J.J. will be coming along this time.

And then there's always people who request _him_ specifically for house calls and check-ups because, quite frankly, Yuuri's colleagues lean towards horrific when it comes to bedside manner and both Otabek and Minami are an acquired taste. In the intensive care unit, some people like that, for the most part, Otabek will leave you alone. Some people don't like that, from time to time, he picks up your charts, frowns, and then leaves again without uttering a single word. Minami offers to bring patients hot food straight from the lunch hall, but he also takes fifteen minutes before administering an injection to psych himself up, which is awful and a little bit mortifying to sit through.

Prosthetic maintenance always takes priority over standard house calls, because Yuuri is the only medical officer onboard who's specialized in prosthesis. Also, dysfunctional cybernetic limbs are, generally speaking, kind of a racket.

While he's running house calls, Larissa illuminates paths on the floor indicating where Yuuri needs to go to find who he's looking for. It's marginally more convenient than running around the ship like a headless chicken.

He does happen to run into Victor in an empty corridor while he's making his way to the bridge, and Victor wastes no time in curling his arm around Yuuri's waist and pulling him in close with a wolfish grin on his face, like Yuuri's in the wrong place at the wrong time and now he's in trouble for it.

"Where are you in a rush to? I've been looking for you," Victor singsongs.

" _Victor_ ," Yuuri hisses, and it's difficult to focus, and he's pushing at where Victor's got him wrapped up but he's not pushing as hard as he could be. "Come on, what do you want? I have so much work to do, I don't have time for this."

"Oh, my poor baby," Victor gushes, winding his fingers through Yuuri's hair, and his eyes are alight and his hands are soft and Yuuri feels himself chasing that touch until he sees that smug little smile on Victor's mouth, and then suddenly he's had enough and he's not anybody's _poor baby—_ not until further notice. "Please, tell me you're free tonight."

"I get off at eight." _Well._ Sort of. Not really. He is lying.

" _Perfect_ ," Victor purrs. "So why don't you and me—"

"I'm not doing anything with you," Yuuri says plainly. Victor pulls away and folds his arms over his chest, a finger pressed to his lips like he's hushing someone, and honestly, Yuuri prefers being held to _this_ , to Victor looking straight through him.

"I see we're back to square one," Victor observes. Whatever that means.

It means he can leave, even if he's a little peachy in the face now, and when he gets to the bridge Chis will probably tease him about it.

"I'll see you later," Yuuri mumbles. Victor cocks an eyebrow, like he doesn't quite believe him.

 

*

 

Yuuri tends to hit the gym late at night when he's not training with Minami, because it usually means there's nobody around to judge him while he bench presses and cries at the same time.

Key word being 'usually.' Fifteen minutes into self-imposed misery and mortification, he lifts his head to see Victor straddling him, leaning forward with an optimistic "Hi."

Yuuri wipes his eyes and blinks, wiping sweat and tears away on the bench. He's simultaneously horrified and unsurprised he didn't hear Victor coming in over the sound of his own agony.

"I didn't know you worked out," Victor says, dragging his index finger down the shallow dip of Yuuri's sweaty sternum. Somehow this isn't doing wonders for his vertigo. "But I should've guessed. You look good. A lot better than you did when you were seventeen."

Yuuri blinks at him, then abruptly blurts, "Do you need something?"

"Oh, I hate it when you're in a _mood_ ," Victor says, petulant and frowning. His fingers are still splayed out on Yuuri's chest, fingernails gently digging into sweat-damp skin. "I'm just dropping by. You can keep going if you want." He swipes his tongue along his lower lip, peering down at Yuuri beneath hooded lids. "I'd love to watch."

"Remember when you said you were going to leave me alone?" Yuuri asks, but resumes lifting anyway, just so he has something to distract himself from Victor's fingertips swirling in patterns on his chest.

"No," Victor says, grinning. Yuuri's inclined to believe him. "Remember when you said you'd miss talking to me?"

Yuuri sets the barbell down with a huff. "No." Why he would miss this is completely beyond him, although most things are when Victor has his legs spread and he's perched on Yuuri's waist. "You're heavy," Yuuri grunts.

"Do you think you could lift me?" Victor looks excited by the prospect, but Yuuri's useless lizard brain can only concentrate on one thing at a time and right now, it's not humiliating himself by rutting up against Victor.

Yuuri wipes sweat from his forehead, trying not to shift his legs too much as he props himself up on his elbows. "I'm not doing that." He considers it for a moment. "Maybe if you broke both your legs."

Victor's face scrunches up in distaste. "No thank you." And then, "Oh, but then I'd get to spend time with you, wouldn't I?"

"This isn't spending time with me?" Yuuri scowls, jerking his thighs to make a point. Immediately he regrets it: Victor flinches and his eyes widen, nails scraping Yuuri's ribs. "Just because you're my patient doesn't mean I have to be nice to you."

"Believe me, I know. You made that very clear." Victor peers down at him, radiating regality like he's the king of the whole universe and Yuuri's lap is his rightful throne. "But I've heard that Nurse Katsuki—"

"What did I say about—"

"—is so sweet to all his patients that nobody would ever believe how mean he is to _me_ —hey!" Victor yelps when Yuuri yanks him down by his tie, and he has to plant his hands on either side of Yuuri's head to stop their foreheads from colliding.

Yuuri's breath hitches, having him this close. He can make out the sun freckles on Victor's nose that he hasn't managed to cover up with concealer, and the lines under his eyes that he's had since forever; little things that sometimes make Victor look more weary than he is.

But right now he looks anticipatory, agitated even. Maybe he thinks he's finally going to get a kiss. Idiot.

Yuuri keeps him in the dark for just a moment, so close to tasting the apricot yogurt Victor always has for breakfast. "Would it kill you to be a gentleman once in a while?" Yuuri chides. He pinches Victor's chin between his thumb and forefinger, forcing Victor to look him in the eye. "I don't think you and I are that close." He drags his thumb down Victor's chin and over the slope of his neck. He can feel Victor's adam's apple sinking beneath his touch when he swallows.

"In that case," Victor breathes shallow, smiling crooked and proud, "I'd like to know why you've booked my whole afternoon tomorrow."

Yuuri releases his grip on Victor's tie and shoves him away. For some reason he hadn't realized it would be Victor flying him out.  "Don't let it get to your head. We're on a milk run."

"Just the two of us," Victor says wistfully, smoothing out wrinkles in his precious button-up. "I'm excited already."

"I know. I can feel it," Yuuri grumbles, and Victor almost falls to the floor as he's scrambling to get off his lap.

" _Crude_ ," Victor accuses, brushing off his slacks. He's flushed from his cheeks right down to his collar. "I've never met someone so uncouth in my whole life," he says, prodding an accusatory finger.

Yuuri sits up on the bench and stretches his arms, slow and languid, rolling the kinks out of his neck. "You and me both," he grumbles.

" _Don't_ flex your muscles at me when we're arguing," Victor snaps. There's a curl at the corner of his mouth where he's trying not to smile, and he has to break eye contact for a moment. Yuuri's surprised when he realizes that Victor's still having fun with this. As a matter of fact he's so surprised he forgets to keep flexing. "Just who do you think you are, wonderboy? You used to be so darling. So cute. So sweet." Victor sighs. "Like a profiterole."

Yuuri wipes away his sweat with a wet rag and hides his face in it for a conspicuously long time, because he hates how all these conversations seem to eventually devolve into backhanded flirting.

When he comes out of hiding, Victor is still standing there, suddenly looking contemplative.

"What?" Yuuri puffs up. "What's that face for?"

"What face," Victor says, primly.

Yuuri wrinkles his nose. "Go away. Make your faces at Makkachin."

"I'm not—oh right, I keep forgetting. I need clearance to your cabin—"

"No."

Victor huffs. "Well for some reason Makkachin keeps getting locked in there, and she doesn't come out when I call her."

Upon hearing this, Yuuri doesn't think to mask his purely delighted smile. Victor arches an eyebrow. "Are you serious? How do you do this?"

Yuuri shrugs. "Makkachin's been staying with Minami while you've been gone. It's not me."

Victor pinches the bridge of his nose, frustrated. "That's not what I mean."

"Don't tell me you get _lonely_ ," Yuuri teases, and regrets it before he even sees the hurt look that flashes across Victor's face for half a beat.

He's not really one to talk anyhow.

"Well, um," Yuuri says, quieter now. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Right." Victor shifts uneasily from foot to foot. "I need to go anyway."

As Victor leaves, Yuuri turns to face the floor-to-ceiling windows behind him. The gym is cool and empty again, cast in faint starlight. He should head back to his cabin. The work day is long over, and he's tired.

But he sits there for another few moments, until he's certain Victor is long gone. Funny, how all their meetings were always orchestrated by something far beyond their control up until now, he thinks, looking out at the stars.

 

*

 

Ceres-56 is a dry, dusty thing of a moon, but in its current season it's habitable, so Yuuri and Victor touch down in civilian clothing. The moon is entirely commercial; essentially just one, big shopping district, in an oil-rich desert with hardly any permanent residents.

They've got the whole afternoon to themselves, and Yuuri feels somewhat inclined to soften Victor up after possibly having poked a hole in his shiny, golden ego.

It's why, when Victor scowls at the parking fees upon rolling up in a literal desert in the middle of nowhere, Yuuri leans across him and slots his credit card into the ticket machine.

"Oh, of course," Victor says, while Yuuri is tearing off the receipt. "You have a company card."

Yuuri clears his throat while he's unbuckling his seatbelt. It is and it isn't a company card. Mostly it isn't. But he doesn't mention it.

Saucers and hoverbugs hum like cicadas overhead, and they burn to look at, their shiny, aluminium hulls blazing in the midday heat, bigger and brighter than the stars now invisible in the daytime sky.

Evidently Victor's parked a while away from the center of the city, so they walk through open air bazaars and fly markets, idly wandering amongst street vendors with hot bread buns and dubious good luck charms. Victor's helpless to resist the old women who gush over him, offering him warm saucers filled with spiced wine, and rubbing perfumed balms on his inner wrist. He picks up old, cigarillo boxes, and glass jars filled with tupelo nectar and little white flowers.

Victor wanders out of his sight for fifteen minutes and returns with a half a loaf of freshly baked garlic bread wrapped in greasy tissue paper, while Yuuri is studying some kitschy perfumes.

"What are you looking at?" Victor asks around a mouthful of bread. He's wearing sunglasses now, which Yuuri would deem reasonable if he were actually using them rather than keeping them perched on his crown. Victor picks up a pink glass bottle and closely inspects it, before squeezing the pump and spraying Yuuri with a cloud of the stuff. Yuuri fixes him with a withering look.

"Sorry," Victor says. "It said love potion."

"And your first instinct was to spray it on me," Yuuri says, stealing a chunk of garlic bread from Victor. He smells like powdered sugar now, so it's not all bad.

He sniffles. "Well, is it working? Are you in love with me now?"

"Oh, hopelessly," Victor says, like it should be obvious. He laughs when Yuuri elbows him and grumbles something sardonic under his breath.

They're rapidly veering off schedule, and Victor's whining about the dry air and the heat and his precious complexion, so Yuuri rolls his eyes and walks them towards the nearest pharmacy, where Victor buys cheap, candy-flavored lip gloss and pops his lips in the mirror. Meanwhile, Yuuri runs down a grocery list of painkillers and disposable needles, and picks up Otabek's favorite laxatives. At checkout, he dumps Victor's new lip gloss tubes into his basket, and flashes the pharmacist his medical license to allay any of her apprehension about selling someone two hundred packets of paracetamol.

"So, we're done?" Victor dusts off his hands, once they're outside and he's successfully sweet talked Yuuri into carrying all of their bags.

"Sort of. I want to get souvenirs, if you don't mind hanging around a little longer," Yuuri says.

"I would never dream of stopping you from spending money on things you don't need," Victor soothes, which is how they end up in a Yves Durif boutique, in the affluent center of the jewel city, Yuuri admiring an ivory-hued resin hairbrush while Victor watches him with an unreadable expression on his face.

He has no idea how long he's been staring at this brush.

"You know that brush would cost me two month's salaries," Victor points out. "Are you allowed to spend money on this stuff with a company card?"

"It's my card," Yuuri confesses, handing the brush over to a shop assistant. Now that the cat's out of the bag, Victor pales, or maybe his cheeks just get a little redder, or maybe both. "I'll get reimbursed for the medical supplies later, though. Why, are you bored?"

Victor shakes his head. "No, no, I'm having fun. You've always been so good with gifts."

That much is true. For Minami, Yuuri's already bought a pile of cellphone charms, technicolor origami paper, and a couple of signed posters of his favorite actors. Chris likes any confectionery that leaves a mess all over your fingers and has to be licked clean, and those old Italian spaghetti westerns.

"Your mother spoiled me, you know," Victor says, and Yuuri cracks a small smile at that. He rubs the back of his neck.

"Clearly she didn't spoil you enough. You've been wearing the same drugstore lip gloss since you were sixteen." (It's true. He knows what it tastes like.) Victor's mouth forms a little 'o'.

As it turns out, Yuuri's mother's predilection for spoiling Victor Nikiforov rotten runs in the family.

Their milk run rapidly devolves into Victor hanging off of Yuuri's arm with a rose and pistachio gelato in his other hand ( _gelato_ , the vendor emphasizes, not ice cream, because ice cream is for poor people, and also for some reason the gelato is topped with pure gold). Victor only has to so much as glance in a store window before Yuuri says it's fine, they have time, even though clearly time is not the issue here; Victor isn't preening because Yuuri's spending bucket loads of _time_ on him. Nobody dares to complain about the food they bring in store because, hello, Victor has a few flecks of literal _gold_ on the corner of his mouth. He also has a new pair of sunglasses—which he's still not wearing properly—and they look exactly the same as his old ones, except these costed twelve hundred international dollars. ("So clearly they're sexier," the shop assistant had apparently said, although Yuuri suspects Victor might have been paraphrasing her explanation.)

It seems now that other venues have opened—that is, Yuuri's bank account has been split wide open—Victor thinks drugstore cherry lip gloss is out of the question. Which is a shame, because the taste had really grown on Yuuri when he was younger. But Victor's moved onto other things, like rose-infused lip tonics packed with collagen. Yuuri pretends that he understands what's happening at all, and leafs through beauty magazines, while beauticians coo at Victor and prettify him to the point of no return. He is painfully aware of how this must look to all the people around them. He has eight shopping bags on each arm, half of them complimentary, partly because Victor is spending exorbitant amounts of money wherever he goes and partly because he has the pearly smile of someone living in the lap of luxury and not paying a single penny for it.

Victor ends up smelling like fifty different perfume samples, and he has new golden bangles that Yuuri doesn't even remember buying. His skin is glowing, cheeks rosy with the sun, and nutrient-rich chemical peels, and the intoxicating thrill of spending someone else's life savings on a single pair of stilettos. Briefly Yuuri wonders if this is going to get his card cancelled, but then he's distracted by a leftover piece of clay on Victor's neck from a white marble face mask. He leans across the coffee table they're sitting at to peel it off, and does not realize how carried away he's gotten until Victor takes his hand and presses a delicate kiss to the inside of his wrist.

Yuuri goes bug-eyed at that and bangs his knee against the table when his pocket starts buzzing with a call from _Cupid_.

How long have they been gone? He didn't clear his schedule for this—he didn't think he'd have to. It was supposed to be a supply run and now Victor's got waxed legs. That's ridiculous. The hair was already white. "O-Officer Katsuki reporting," he stutters, cringing inwardly at the way he sounds. "Is there an emergency?"

Victor twirls his fork around on his plate, propping his chin up on his newly manicured hands and making eyes at him while Yuuri takes the call.

"The emergency—" It's Chris, sounding like he's having far too much fun "—is that you've missed three appointments in favor of spending hundreds of dollars on women's underwear."

"Victor, you bought _panties?_ " Yuuri hisses, way too loud for present company, and then feels himself flush up to his hairline when Victor shrugs nonchalantly and takes a sip of his peach bellini. Yuuri angles himself away from him and cups the side of his face to whisper to Chris. "I don't know what I'm doing," he admits. "And stop monitoring my credit card activity! It's embarrassing!"

"I think it's a good look on you," Chris says, so obviously there is no emergency and he's wasting his time. Yuuri hangs up on him, something which is fast becoming a bad habit of his.

 

*

 

Yuuri doesn't want to think about how much money he just spent, but it's difficult to ignore now that Victor's cockpit is filled with shopping bags, which are in turn filled with delicate tissue paper, which is in turn protecting expensive shoes and lavish jewelry, and also lingerie, apparently. He doesn't know when that happened or how he didn't notice. It's possible his brain just erased the memory out of sheer mortification on his part. He does know that at some point he's going to have to sort through everything and separate what's his, what's his-by-proxy but really Victor's, and what they actually went out for in the first place. Which was mostly painkillers, but here they are.

"Oh, I didn't buy anything for Makkachin!" Victor says as he's starting the engine on _Lutetia_ , and Yuuri wants to dropkick him but he took that stupid oath, so he just sits there and hates himself severely. "But she's already spoilt anyway."

"She's not the only one," Yuuri grumbles.

"It's not my fault you pampered me within an inch of my life." Victor lifts his chin. "You've _ruined_ me. I'm _ruined_."

"Good." Yuuri folds his arms over his chest and glowers at him. They're lifting off now. Finally, they're going to leave this wretched moon and all its stupidly extravagant boutiques, and its stupid tacky love potions.

Victor gives his bouquet of bonica roses a loving pat. He sighs when he sees Yuuri sulking. "I'm sorry that you missed work. I think it's an absolute travesty."

Yuuri sinks further into his seat.

"How come you have so much saved anyway?" Victor glances over at him. "Are you—sorry, _were_ you—saving up for something big?

Yuuri thinks on it. The answer, really, is _no_. Of course there was always the knowledge that one day he'd have a use for the extra cash; something slightly more substantial than gifting Victor with a spa day. But he hasn't been working towards anything in particular. Nothing truly tangible.

Rather he started his apprenticeship on _Cupid_ to get away from these little pangs of insecurity—the growing knowledge that Earth was falling behind the rest of the galaxy, and with it his family. Victor had been long gone by then, and so it seemed there was little else to do but finally make a home for himself amongst the stars.

"I don't spend a lot of money on myself," Yuuri says, hugging his knees to his chest. "I guess after I started wiring enough money to my family, I never really thought about my future much."

 _Lutetia_ does not quiver or tremble, and her engines can barely be heard as they cut through the stratosphere at tens of thousands of miles per hour. Yuuri leans over and fastens Victor's seatbelt for him. Victor looks down at him in surprise, but doesn't mention it.

"You'll find someone," Victor says. Which is strange, because it sounds like he's trying to comfort Yuuri, who isn't all that perturbed about it. "Or I guess someone will find you."

Yuuri tears his gaze away from the window and stares at Victor. He's not even looking at Yuuri, just staring out at all the stars poking holes in the otherwise vacant darkness.

He sits back in his chair, toying with the hem of his sleeve. "I like my work, but—" _But it's the only thing I have,_ he thinks "—I can't stay on Cupid forever."

"Why not?" Victor asks, idly. "You're obviously well-paid. You're high-ranking, and in good standing with your superiors." He pauses and adds, "Too good, if we're being honest."

Yuuri laughs quietly at that. "Do you really think it's okay to never settle down?" he asks. "I kind of live like a bachelor. I'd be forty and not know how to cook or clean."

"What, you want to stay at home? Yuuri Katsuki, a trophy husband?" Victor lifts an eyebrow. "Surely not. That isn't the impression you just gave me."

Yuuri purses his lips. "I just think it'd be nice." He tips his head back and stares up at the ceiling. In the low light of the cockpit, he can make out the glow-in-the-dark stars that Victor has blu-tacked to the ceiling. "To have a forever home."

He thinks he could manage that one day, for the rest of his life.


	7. Chapter 7

Their trip back to _Cupid_ is a slow and lazy indulgence, more of a cruise than anything. Victor takes the routes that intrigue him, and he's easily intrigued—by tiny dogs, and ballet dancers, and whether or not he can get away with sitting in his ex-boyfriend's lap—so while their initial voyage to Ceres-56 was only a fifteen minute drive, the way back drags on all too pleasantly, and they wind up in _Lutetia_ for an extra three hours, skirting cosmic dust paths and idly shooting the breeze.

In the rosy-hued and flattering light of the red dwarfs they pass, _Lutetia_ is a cosy and companionable thing. Suddenly, Yuuri notices the peeling flower stickers on the console, the piña colada-scented air freshener shaped like a pineapple, the spray bottle filled with conditioner labelled ' _dirty dog!!!_ ' in Victor's looping cursive. The same handwriting is on all of his twinkling star maps, denoting the routes of travelling carnivals and where the most spectacular meteor showers of the millennium are supposed to take place—and then littler things, like where his favorite singers are touring (in case he happens to be in the neighborhood), and where his current hair stylist works. The shimmery pin-ups remain, unfortunately, but upon closer inspection, Yuuri can see that they're…made out to Victor personally? Okay. Maybe they're celebrities. He's still out of the loop on that front.

_Lutetia_ cuts through space like a shooting star, a glint of pink riding the drag of dying stars and crumbling moons. Victor is all languid lines and easy conversation, like maneuvering _Lutetia_ through orbital slingshots is akin to skipping stones on still water. He points at faraway floating nebulae, at raspberry pink heat shimmers in the blurry distance, and talks about how over there the strawberry daiquiris are _to die for_ , or that Yuri likes their candied plums best—and Yuuri just floats there, as sleepy as he's intrigued, wondering how long Victor's been doing this.

He's only half awake, and pleasantly drowsy, but in his abstracted state he thinks that all these things are charming, greater than the sum of their parts. Victor sings with too much vibrato. He overdoes it on cologne. He buys overpriced pumps he can't walk in and wobbles around in them like a baby deer for several hours before demanding to ride on Yuuri's shoulders like he's only been _pretending_ to be a six foot one, grown man. Despite these fatal flaws, Yuuri sort of likes him anyway, because he is helpless to resist poor life decisions.

At some point, Victor must dock _Lutetia_ in _Cupid's_ hangar without Yuuri noticing; he's fallen asleep. He does not voice his (totally reasonable) expectation that Victor will carry him bridal-style to the makeshift bed in _Lutetia's_ cargo storage unit and tuck him in and read him a bedtime story.

"Well, wonderboy," Victor says, stretching his arms over his head, "here we are. Home sweet home."

"Mmmph." Yuuri's head lolls to the side. "One more minute," he drawls, with zero intention of actually ever moving. He wants to stay here forever, and sleep his life away in Calypso's cradle.

Victor tuts. "Oh, look at you." Yuuri doesn't need to look at him to know Victor's got that radioactive smile on his face. "It doesn't look very good, me giving you back like this."

"Tell them you lost me," Yuuri mumbles. Victor clucks, as if he'd never _dream_ of being so careless, and he has no idea where Yuuri gets this idea that he's irresponsible in any way.

"As much as I'd like to keep you for myself—" Victor unbuckles his seatbelt and gets to his feet, hands on his hips "—you're very popular, and I'd get in a lot of trouble with your strange friends."

Victor circles around to Yuuri's seat and ruffles his hair. Yuuri blinks himself awake, preening under the attention, cranky feline thing that he is. "Come on, sleeping beauty," Victor coaxes, dragging his fingers down to rub slowly at Yuuri's shoulders. "Up you go."

"Stop talking." Yuuri reaches behind him, blindly searching for Victor's face so he can expertly shut him up by swatting him in the mouth. "Stop doing— _that_ ," he says, shuddering when Victor scrapes his nails down the side of his neck.

"So grumpy when you're tired!" Victor teases, childish delight shining through his voice, spinning Yuuri's chair around so that they're face to face. Begrudgingly, Yuuri takes Victor's extended hand and pulls himself up, aware that if he doesn't then Victor will end up just throwing him over his shoulder and carrying him back to his room. "I promise next time I'll have you back before bedtime," he says.

Yuuri hated being fed that line when he was seventeen and he hates it now, in the same synthetic way he hates everything about Victor—which is to say, not at all, and even if he's giving Victor lip now, he's definitely going to write about this later in the secret diary stuffed under his mattress.

"I'm telling Chris you kidnapped me," Yuuri grumbles.

"He'll be very confused if you tell him that to his face," Victor points out, his arms snaking around Yuuri's waist. "Want me to walk you to your room?"

Exhaustion sneaks up on him again, so he forgoes reason and tucks his chin in the crook of Victor's neck. "You don't have to," he yawns, a nascent flush behind his eyelids, a sheer amber glow inviting him to drift off as he wraps his arms around Victor's shoulders.

"Can I do it anyway?" Victor asks hopefully. Like he doesn't sleep just down the hall.

"You can carry me," he jokes, safe in the knowledge that his upper body strength far outshines Victor's. "Wait, no. Don't—" but Victor is already lifting him up "— _Victor_ , I have work!" he hisses.

"What, right _now?_ " Victor sounds disbelieving. It's nice to be looking down at him for once, even if Yuuri does have his legs wrapped around his waist in an effort to not send them both sprawling to the floor. "No, absolutely not. It's far too late for you to be working. You were just falling asleep!"

"You should've let me," Yuuri huffs, entirely derisive and already finding a way to blame the day's events on literally anybody else.

Victor cocks an eyebrow at him. "What?" Yuuri snaps. "There's a bed in here!"

"Very grumpy indeed," Victor says under his breath as he's turning to leave. Yuuri resigns himself to being carried back to his room after all, and hopes that they won't run into anyone in the corridors. He curls closer against Victor, modesty be damned, breathes him in and lets his eyes fall closed.

The hangar is cool and empty, insulated from raw, unadulterated space by an invisible force field. It's a spooky place, dark whether or not there are stars and moons nearby to light it, with its impossibly high ceilings, and sweeping floors in untarnished, gunmetal grey. The clang of Victor's footsteps echo throughout the hangar, which is otherwise steeped in haunting silence.

It's exceedingly ominous. Yuuri hates it. He doesn't understand how Victor could spend three months living in a place like this, all by himself. Victor and his scratch-and-sniff hibiscus stickers, his pineapple-shaped air fresheners, his flower print quilt that Yuuri imagines (hopes) he hides when people come over—it's no wonder he makes such a strange haven of his jet. It's his well-loved bijou oasis. Yuuri wants put a welcome mat in it himself. And a plate of white plum incense, and a maneki-neko. And then voilà. Victor hasn't realised it yet, but he'd make a delectable husband, all dressed up in slimming pinstripes with a silk tie and little black briefcase and a homemade bento. He envisions a sunbleached white picket fence, a silver suzuki in the driveway, fistfuls of mother of pearl roses spilling out of the window boxes, the envy of the whole neighborhood. _What a pretty picture—Victor Nikiforov, tame for once in his life_ , Yuuri thinks with a longing sigh. Victor gives him a comforting pat on the back like the precious clueless thing that he is.

And then Victor starts humming an old lullaby when they leave the hangar, completely at ease once the landing deck is behind them, strolling through _Cupid's_ wasteland corridors with a spring in his step even though Yuuri's feeling increasingly unsettled, a nausea frothing in his gut. In a truly unprecedented turn of events, he's relieved that Victor is here, that he offered to walk him to his room and then, for some reason, agreed to carry him around like a little girl. For now, the closer the better. Victor is as good as a warm duvet in warding off foul creatures of the night.

"Do you always work such odd hours?" Yuuri asks as they enter an elevator, partly because he's genuinely curious and partly because he desperately wants to dilute the quiet stillness of _Cupid's_ late night corridors. Unlike the rest of the ship, the pod glows warm and buttercup-yellow inside, a solitary lighthouse amongst a black and roiling sea. "You seem so used to this. And I almost never see you during the day."

"A travesty, I know," Victor says mildly, poking the button for their floor with his elbow, since his hands are otherwise occupied.

"Answer my question." Yuuri frowns at him, but Victor doesn't meet his eye. "Do you even eat breakfast? Get days off?"

Victor says, "Obviously I spend all my free time carrying beautiful men to their bedrooms," so Yuuri nips his neck in retaliation and gets a fully-body flinch for his troubles. He also gets dropped, rather abruptly. " _Ungrateful_ ," Victor hisses, rubbing at his neck while Yuuri looks on in poorly concealed temptation to kiss it better. "I truly don't care for the way you mishandle me," he grumbles at Yuuri, who doesn't believe him in the slightest but opts not to mention it. It's probably for the best to switch tactics at this point, since 'worrisome harrowing doctor' is blatantly doing nothing for Victor whereas 'sweet male nurse' always does more than enough.

"Oh, you poor, poor thing," Yuuri says, dripping with affection in a way that probably comes out more condescending than coy, pushing Victor's hand away from his neck to brush along the bite mark. Victor shivers beneath his touch, looking down at him with a strained and complicated expression that Yuuri doesn't bother with. "How could anyone do this to you?" (He knows exactly how: Victor is obstinate. His neck is well and truly biteable. Yuuri could write a thesis about the wonderful synergy of these two traits.)

"And after I've been so well-behaved, too," Victor says, simpering at him. The elevator dings, and Yuuri belatedly notices he has him cornered, pushed up against the wall in their proximity.

He takes a step back, and Victor slackens, blowing his fringe out of his face. "What were you going to do after this?" Yuuri asks him. Victor's schedule still evades him.

"Who knows." Victor shrugs, pulling Yuuri along with him out of the elevator. "Late night walk, maybe. Or…I could fly out and get something to eat, see a movie…as long as I come when I'm called, nobody seems to mind."

"I mind." Yuuri slows his pace. His room's not far enough for this conversation. "You've been up for as long as I have. You should rest." He fixes Victor with one of his serious looks, usually reserved for sick and stubborn patients. Victor's not sick, thankfully, though Yuuri would love to get him in his office one of these days and poke him in the mouth with a popsicle stick and ask, ' _What is it about you that makes me want to spend all of my money on flowers for you?_ '

It's getting late. He should wrap this up, although he knows that later when he's lying in bed, he's going to tide this conversation over and over again in his head until it's as smooth as sea glass. "You need to take care of yourself."

Victor doesn't say anything until they're outside Yuuri's door, and then he leans down and whispers, with a proud grin on his face, "You'd never let anything bad happen to me."

Yuuri gives him a searching look, then concedes defeat, ducking his head and pressing his palm to the security pad by his door. "That's a secret."

Victor winks at him. "Promise I won't tell anyone about your little crush."

' _Little_ ,' Yuuri thinks bleakly. It's bigger than Mount fucking Fuji. It's going nowhere just as fast.

"Cross your heart and hope to die," he tells Victor, in an imitation of his younger self, and then slips quietly into his bunk.

 

*

 

548325.98 — _six years ago_

"I think my parents are getting suspicious of you," Yuuri says one night, while they're lying in a wet patch of earth in the middle of the running track, pearls of dew sticking to the grass blades that prickle the backs of their knees.

"Oh? I can't imagine what you've been telling them." Victor rolls over, gets mud all over his shirt, shuffles up against Yuuri, and then gets mud all over him too. God knows why they're out here. Victor gets bored, and Yuuri inevitably gets dragged along and ends up enabling his erratic teenage behavior. "I'm an angel."

"Yeah, that's why they don't get why you like me," Yuuri says. "I had _one_ friend growing up." He frowns. "And she wasn't even—she was my mom's best friend."

"Like a hand-me-down," Victor says, and Yuuri elbows him. "Okay, okay, keep going. I've never heard that before."

He swallows. "I think I was seven the first time I met her. She stumbled into the banquet room in the middle of the night while I was watching cartoons. I almost threw the remote at her."

"Stop," Victor says. "First of all, you were seven years old and your parents let you watch TV in the middle of the night? I thought you lived in an inn."

"Yeah, they probably thought I was a really inconsiderate guest or like, a ghost. I don't know. How do you pick up on that first?" Yuuri turns his head to narrow his eyes at Victor. "The first friend I ever had was three times my age. Who cares about the TV?"

Victor blinks at him. "Okay." He looks mildly affronted. "Next time I interrupt I'll make sure to interrogate your relationships."

At that, Yuuri refuses to continue until Victor pinches his cheeks, rubs their legs together, bothers him until Yuuri's hot with embarrassment and he can barely remember the rest of the stupid story, let alone retell it.

"Stop it," Yuuri grumbles into Victor's shoulder, blushing furiously. "You'll make us a public scandal."

"I want to hear about your strange and lonely childhood!" Victor laughs. Yuuri just keeps wailing into his shoulder, flustered, and there's still mud everywhere because they're still in a dirty wet field. There's no redeeming this experience; he might as well tell half the story and get it over with.

Victor whispers, "What was her name?"

"Minako," Yuuri breathes, and she's not someone Yuuri will ever miss, but she's the only reason he ever made it here at all, in the rich and ripe American jungles, under a milk white spray of stars, lying in the mud with an unbelievably pretty boy. "I couldn't sleep and she told me not to say anything, not to tell my mom, just—she crashed on the couch and watched cartoons with me."

And then she'd said the cartoons were giving her a headache, and ' _change the channel, christ, you really sneak out of bed for this stuff?_ ' which, in hindsight, was completely inappropriate to be saying to a seven-year-old, but it more or less sums up his relationship with Minako, and it also sums up why he never talks about Minako. She'd figured out quickly that Yuuri didn't have many friends, that the only time he got to go out with people was when Mari took him to the arcade where they'd place space hockey, and then when his blood sugar got too low he'd start sulking, so Mari would let him blow the rest of their tickets on claw games until he got a caterpillar plush.

Victor rolls over to what is now his favorite summer vacation hotspot, on top of Yuuri with his head on his chest. "You're not listening," Yuuri notes. Victor doesn't say anything, just nestles closer. He looks for all the world like he's found heaven. Like solace is hidden in Yuuri Katsuki's soggy undershirts.

"You never talk about your parents," Yuuri says, because he already knows that Victor doesn't like talking about them, in the exact same way Yuuri doesn't like talking about Minako, so it's an eye for an eye—and also he feels entitled because they're still in mud and it's still Victor's fault.

Victor cracks one eye open and regards him with a great deal of distaste, like Yuuri's disturbed his hibernation period and not an impromptu nap in the middle of a running track. "I'm not introducing you to them," he says shortly. "You're too…"

Victor closes his eyes again. Yuuri stares at him. "I'm too what." Pokes him. "What!"

Victor scowls at him, props himself up on his elbows, effectively caging Yuuri. "You're too sweet on me," he spits. "My parents want me to get married. They want lots of really small Russian grandbabies."

Yuuri fixes him with what he hopes is an extremely unimpressed look. "God, that is terrible," he says drily. "What's that got to do with me? I'm not trying to marry you."

"You would _love_ to marry me. Don't think for a second that I don't know," Victor says, and he's being mean, really, because Yuuri hasn't even done anything lately to warrant this kind of tyranny. "I bet all your notebooks are filled with Mr. Yuuri Nikiforov, and you'd like to put a ring on my finger and whisk me away forever."

Which is big talk coming from someone who came all over his chest in two minutes last week, but it doesn't matter—Victor turns Yuuri's heart into a useless, dripping thing. He probably wears it like cologne.

"I don't—what—that's not fair," Yuuri stammers, heady and confused by the way Victor is slowly pressing against him.

"Does your father know—" Victor leans down until their foreheads are brushing "—that you're out here, kissing strange boys?"

And he didn't think it'd be like this, but Victor's always undone him in the worst of ways. Yuuri wraps his arms around his neck and the smooth curve of Victor's back crumbles, and Yuuri gasps against him. He spreads his knees, breathes sharp and broken like he's trying not to sob, and Victor pushes their hips together, all heavy and slow and lazy.

He's been dreaming of the noises Victor makes, the way that he trembles when Yuuri's between his legs, high-strung and needy. He doesn't want anyone to know that he's kissing Victor, or that his mouth is slick and sweet like honey, that he moans softly when Yuuri tangles his hair in his fingers and starts to pull.

Yuuri's throat feels sore with that sound. His chest aches with it.

That midnight summer warmth melts when Victor pulls away, all dizzy and with his eyes glazed over, a finger on his glossy lips that comes away with a thin thread of saliva. Yuuri drops his hands and rests one on his forehead, trying to catch his breath and not look so ravished.

"Wow," Victor whispers, like he's just seen a magic trick. He sits back on his haunches, still resting on Yuuri's thighs. Yuuri doesn't know where to go from here. What were they talking about again? He got derailed. He got a mess made out of him for being too sweet on a boy who's not for him.

Yuuri stares up into space, at the white waxing moon and the lush, velvet sky. Victor's already texting someone. Amazing. Yuuri is truly a rosy-faced lovebird in love with a peacock.

"You made me wait all that time for a kiss and we end up doing it in the mud," he mutters. His feathers are all ruffled.

Victor peers at him over his phone and Yuuri can tell he's hiding one of his terrible smiles behind it. "You didn't actually have to wait, you know. This is just what you get for acting so afraid of me all the time."

"Right," Yuuri says. "So you admit it was basically a punishment."

"Well I'll never kiss you again if you hate it so bad." Victor flicks a piece of dirt at him. "You go run off with a nicer boy than me. Go and _marry_ him, see if I care," he says, all haughty and disdainful. Like marrying is a thing you do to someone.

"I don't run around with you because you're _nice_ ," Yuuri says, incredulous that Victor could think such a thing, and shrieks when Victor pounces on him.

"Yuuri Katsuki, you're the cruelest, meanest heartbreaker I've ever met in my whole horrible life!" Victor wails, winding his arms around Yuuri's neck. He gasps, "How could you even say that to me?"

Indulgently, Yuuri pulls him flush against his chest again, mashes their cool, dew-damp cheeks together and says, "I just want us to go to home. I don't want you to get sick."

Victor huffs hot on his ear, somewhat appeased. He gets to his feet, pulls Yuuri up with him, and asks, "Am I sleeping at your place?"

"Of course you are," Yuuri says, a little bit puzzled and a lot more smitten. "You kind of live with me."

"God, we're basically married already," Victor moans, already dragging Yuuri with him towards the showers. "I hope you're proud of yourself!"

Yuuri doesn't know whether to scowl and tell Victor to shut up, or kiss his bare shoulder and let him know that yes, he's very proud of himself actually—his not-husband is the hottest thing the world's ever seen. So he doesn't say anything, just lets Victor pull him along as if Yuuri's totally hopeless without him (and he very much is) and lets Victor tell him, "You're gonna wash my back, loverboy, no way I'm getting sick with you."

 

*

 

Unfortunately Victor Nikiforov is not the genius everyone makes him out to be, and so he does get sick despite Yuuri's heroic efforts. In fact they _both_ get sick, and maybe it's something to do with all the liquid-to-liquid contact—" _Stop_ calling it that, Yuuri, that's disgusting and I _hate_ you for doing this to me, and I _hate_ being married to you."—but who knows, really. There's nothing to be done. It only means they hole themselves up in Yuuri's room for a week, kissing until they're too nauseous to keep at it, furiously kicking off blankets and then immediately crashing to the floor to retrieve them when their fevers protest, clinging to each other and sweating through all the bedsheets.

The only other person they talk to is Yuuri's mama on a laptop, sweet and sour like freshly picked strawberries, nagging at them to go outside and breathe some real air, eat some real food—but Victor shuts that idea down pretty quickly and goes to lament in the bathtub instead, until Yuuri checks up on him to make sure that the bathroom's not flooded and Victor hasn't dumped him for a rubber ducky.

"I will if you keep acting so obsessed with me," Victor threatens, wielding a loofah with his foot and stabbing the air with it because he's in one of his lovely moods, so Yuuri murmurs 'okay' and leaves him to his own devices.

Later Victor refuses to speak to him for a whole fourteen minutes, bundled up in the last clean towel and glowering at his negligent husband for being so _oblivious_ and _cold-hearted_ and _not washing his hair for him_ after he ordered him to go away. Yuuri does not point out any possible holes in this argument when Victor voices his displeasure; in fact he stops listening after several seconds and says he's very, very sorry and he'll never do it again, begging forgiveness in between kissing Victor's hands, along his arms and up the wet skin of his neck until he wipes that cold look off of Victor's face. Yuuri watches him melt like dirty snow in wake of balmy spring.

And at the end of that dreadful (wonderful) week, Victor's written _Mr. Yuuri Nikiforov_ in hearts and glimmer in all of Yuuri's textbooks for him—because he was wrong about getting sick, but he'll be damned if he's wrong about this.

 

*

 

438249.23 — _present day_

Yuuri wakes up to the sight of the bunk drenched in syrupy tangerine light, Minami sitting cross-legged on the floor, fashioning a collar for Makkachin out of the phone charms Yuuri bought him. In which case Victor must have stopped by while Yuuri was sleeping to drop off his things, as well as his beloved pup. Possibly to please Minami. It's a natural reflex, given his gangly shape and toothy smile and bleeding heart.

"Good morning." Yuuri looks on in faint amusement. "Do you know I'm in trouble with Victor because you keep stealing his dog?"

Minami's head whips up at the sound of his voice. " _Ohayo!_ " He picks up Makkachin's paw and makes her wave. Yuuri blinks sleepily at him. "Victor said I could play with her for a little while, so don't worry!"

"If you say so." Yuuri hums. He kicks off his blanket, stretching lazily in his bunk. His afternoon is fully booked today with meetings and appointments, most of which he isn't really looking forward to, but he intentionally kept his morning clear. Phichit's cleaned out the alcove set aside for their veggie project on deck five, and earlier he asked Yuuri if he could come down to help start planting.

(Because Yuuri is kind of a turnip of a person, he imagines this is going to be the most exciting thing that happens to him for a good while. Yesterday he had gelato. Today he's gardening. Obviously there's a god-given limit on how many good things are allowed to happen to Yuuri Katsuki within the span of two days; he's just now finding out that it's 'more than one.')

"I'm heading down to Engineering to help a friend with a project," Yuuri tells Minami as he's getting dressed.

Before Yuuri even manages to pull a shirt over his head, Minami asks if he can come, and Yuuri narrows his eyes at him through the shirt collar. "Don't you have work to do?" he asks.

"…Yes?"

God, he tries. He tries _so_ hard to be a good influence on this boy. He does!

"You can come." Nevermind. "But _only_ for fifteen minutes."

Minami settles for that. Yuuri imagines he'll get bored after fifteen minutes anyway, and watches a little helplessly as Minami finishes Makkachin's collar and beckons for her to follow the two of them out.

He figures out pretty fast that he's slept in late. When he drops by the mess hall to put together a breakfast for Phichit, his crewmates are already bustling past him dressed in work uniform while Yuuri's sporting a linty sweatshirt and a pair of girly athletic shorts he stole from Minami. Larissa's voice follows him down to the botanical gardens, disparaging him for being a slovenly waste of space.

"Officer Katsuki, I'm obliged to inform you that your attire is workplace inappropriate."

"I'm not clocked in yet," Yuuri says, trying for serene as he takes the elevator down to deck five.

"I find your slippers especially objectionable."

"Call _God_ , Larissa," he grumbles, because in space nobody can hear you pick a fight with a sentient thermostat.

He storms out of the elevator and into a high-ceilinged chamber at the tail end of a hallway. Larissa doesn't question where he's going—or if she does, Yuuri can't hear her because the speakers are blown in this section of the ship, which has been out of service for as long as he can remember.

"Where…are we going?" Minami asks, apprehensive.

Tentatively Yuuri says, "You'll see."

Years ago, when Yuuri was younger and constantly getting lost—because he screamed the first time Larissa spontaneously started speaking to him from inside the walls, and from then on she'd refused to guide him—he'd stumbled upon this place completely devoid of live machinery and people. In retrospect it was probably a dick move to immediately climb over the warning tape streaked across the entrance and start wandering around, but the room was intriguingly dilapidated, a stark contrast to the rest of the ship in all its pristine glory. He remembers finding constant pools of muddy liquid on the floor, rotten creepers on the walls, and filthy containers filled to the brim with dubious sludge. He'd asked Chris about it later, and he'd explained that a water tank had burst and left the gardens flooded for long enough that _Cupid's_ only remaining botanist retired by the time they were cleared again.

That was then. Phichit's been cleaning day and night since he was first cleared for duty. Now shafts of dusty starlight stream through the stained-glass windows, and Yuuri can actually make out the vibrant outlines of roses and easter lilies painted on the linoleum floors.

Phichit himself is nowhere to be seen although Yuuri doesn't doubt that he's there—probably just…passed out in a storage closet. "Phichit! I brought you food!" he calls out, while Minami peers into one of the many broad terracotta planters lining the walls. In the center of the room is a dried-up fountain, and several round tables cluttered with gardening supplies.

"Hello?" Nothing.

His face darkens. He doesn't deserve to be stood up by botanists. Botany's not even a real science. He looks down sadly at the tupperware he filled with wobbly poached eggs and sticky rice and little broccoli trees. There's a furikake packet in there with a picture of a duckling printed on it. That's _love_.

In the middle of feeling bad for himself and a furikake packet, he doesn't notice any inconsiderate botanists sneaking up on him until one stabs him in the back with a gardening spade.

Or pokes. Pokes him in the back. But _emotionally_ —

"Yuuuuri!" Phichit singsongs. "Oh, you brought food! Amazing! And…your boy scout," he says, looking over at Minami, who is doing questionable things on the far side of the room.

"Minami, get your head out of the planter," Yuuri says, then turns to face Phichit. His motherly secondhand embarrassment overpowers any previous ill feeling towards Phichit. Suddenly Phichit is an angel. Suddenly botany no longer seems like such a hugely fake science. "Um, do you not want him here?" he asks tentatively.

Truth be told, he's never met anyone who immediately disliked Minami. Even Lilia looks at him with negligible revulsion, which is not how she looks at most of the crew, a fair amount of the department heads, and the polka dots on Yuuri's favorite scrubs.

Phichit gently explains, "It's just that I wanted this project to be between you, and me, and King Tiberius."

"Um." There are alarm bells going off in his head. Chris mentioned something about some kind of space gerbil earlier. "…Who is King Tiberius?"

Minami, who has just encountered King Tiberius for the very first time, chooses that moment to let loose a bloodcurdling screech. He stumbles away from one of the planters, chalk white and breathing hard.

"There's a fucking alien in there!" Minami screams at them, bracing himself against a counter.

"Minami!" Yuuri scolds at the same time Phichit shouts, "Don't be rude!" which is enough to send the poor boy scurrying off, Makkachin following close behind. Phichit goes to tend to the planter, which makes Yuuri trepidatious about its contents.

"Your boy scout is banished from this place until further notice," Phichit says, and then Yuuri watches as he retrieves what is possibly the ugliest, most hideous creature he has ever seen. It's the size of a _watermelon_ , covered in mushroom brown fur with a misshapen lump on its back not unlike a camel hump, and it's more than enough to convince Yuuri that interstellar travel was a terrible mistake. This is God looking him straight in the eye and telling him to stop whatever he's doing. Phichit is gathering it up in his arms like it's his very own child, and the _thing_ is wiggling all eight of its stubby little legs like an upturned cockroach. He needs to leave. He needs to go back to Earth where he belongs. Screw space, screw the _stars_ —he's going home right now and he's going to start work as a milkman in his tranquil hometown and take care of his poor mother like he should've been doing all these years.

"I can't believe you let him behave like that," Phichit chides.

"He doesn't usually swear!" Yuuri insists. "Also, I think your rat owes my boy scout an apology."

"King Tiberius, you have never done anything wrong, in your whole life. Do not listen to this man," Phichit says, cradling King Tiberius. "He will lure you in with his tent and his muscles and his doctorate—"

"—Is there anything you want me to actually do while I'm down here?"

"Hurt everyone's feelings some more, why don't you," Phichit snaps. "No, I'm joking. Don't leave me. I need your body."

" _Phichit_ ," Yuuri groans, dragging his hands down his face.

"To do heavy manual labor for me, obviously!" Phichit flashes him a shining, cherubic smile, pointing to a mountain of sacks of soil in the corner of the room. "We should start planting as soon as possible. By the way, is there anything in particular you want to grow? Tell me now or forever hold your peace."

Yuuri considers it, rubbing his chin in thought. The gardens are large enough that they could grow trees, so maybe what he wants isn't out of the question. "I miss having fresh peaches," he muses. His mother used to dump a spoonful of glazed white peach chunks on top of the cotton cheesecake she made. And then during hot summers, Victor would drive them out to food parks where they'd sit on blankets with steaming hot, brown sugar fruit pies, and syrup-sweet cherry lemonade, and then in the cooling evening get back in Victor's car with enough jars of rich, spiced peaches to last them until fall.

He doesn't mention any of this to Phichit, who can't grow summer picnics on trees.

"Just peaches?"

"And sunflowers," Yuuri blurts. Ridiculous. "Oh, but you don't have to! I know they're just nice to look at."

"We can definitely do sunflowers. I was going to try water lilies myself." Phichit taps his fingers on the counter, humming in consideration. "Listen, don't worry about space. This place is huge. And I can get chilis and wasabi too, but I need stuff you can only get in New Vegas luminaries. Otherwise we're gonna have to stick to one type of climate in here, and that's boring."

"How far is New Vegas? Maybe we can take one of the jets," Yuuri says.

"Really?" Phichit whips his head up. "Oh, I know what you're doing. You just wanna zip around with your steely-eyed missile man. I'm not gonna hang around while you guys stargaze at each other."

"Okay, so we'll fly with the other pilot. Plisetsky." Yuuri shrugs, wandering over to him.

Phichit eyes him suspiciously, then dumps King Tiberius unceremoniously back into the planter. "I have never met someone who is worse at lying than you," he says flatly. Yuuri opens his mouth to protest, but Phichit cuts him off. "Just _go_. Go book a flight with your beau before I change my mind."

"Oh…okay?" Yuuri's face twists up a little in uncertainty, but he's already angling himself to leave and go find Victor. "Um, thank you?" He isn't entirely sure what's happening.

"You're lucky you're pretty!" Phichit hollers as he's scampering off.

 

*

 

"I do not think you are pretty," Larissa calmly informs Yuuri once he's back in the elevator. "Just so we're clear."

"I'm so glad we're clear," Yuuri says drily, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Where's Victor?"

There is a pause, and then Larissa says, "Victor Nikiforov is in his sleeping quarters, on deck four," as if it physically pains her to disclose this information. Thankfully there are some things Larissa cannot refuse him because of his clearance, like crew member's locations aboard the ship. Basic decorum is not one of these things. Yuuri's learnt to live with it. He thinks she gets bored, sometimes.

She lights a path for him anyway, and he suspects that the only reason she does it now is because she knows he doesn't need them anymore. Maybe she just likes lighting paths. They're the only physical presence she has. He's even seen her do them in different colors for other people. Minami gets _rainbows_.

He's not sure whether or not to be surprised when he knocks on the security pad outside Victor's door and finds he has clearance. The door slides open instantly, and Yuuri is slightly thrown off to find that Victor is asleep, curled up like a centipede in the top bunk.

Somehow he's so distracted by the sight of Victor sleeping that it takes him a minute to notice Yuri Plisetsky glaring at him from his outpost right next to the door, and even then Yuri has to cough obnoxiously loud to get his attention.

"Quiet now, Yuri," Victor groans, his voice muffled by his pillow.

"Which one?" Yuri barks, and Yuuri freezes.

"What do you mean, which—" Victor sits up and rubs his eyes, then sees the two of them from his lofty perch "—oh, two of you! My favorites!" he laughs.

"You make me sick," Yuri says, without much enthusiasm.

"You love me," Victor assures him. "Yuuri, did you know he followed me here from Lux? My own guardian angel. He cares about me very much."

At that, Yuri spews something in Russian, and as he's storming out Yuuri likes to think that it's because he has somewhere important to be—and not because Victor tried to insinuate that a seventeen-year-old as cool and unaffected as Yuri Plisetsky could ever feel something as obscene as _love_.

"So," Yuuri says lightly, watching the door slide shut behind him. "You're good with kids."

"Oh, don't you know? Yuri's responsible for _me_." Victor doesn't seem able to keep a smile off his face. "Anyway. Did you miss me so much?" He pats the bedding between his knees with a cattish smile. "Come here, darling. You're so far away."

"Ah," Yuuri says, so quiet it's practically an exhale. "I didn't mean to interrupt your sleep."

"You can make it up to me," Victor purrs, flushing shell pink. "I _was_ having a very good dream."

Yuuri regards him thoughtfully. He's never known anyone to be so buoyantly lewd immediately after being rudely awakened. "No," he says, considering, "no, you should…sleep. I only came to ask if you're free sometime soon, to take me and a friend somewhere."

"I'll take you anywhere," Victor says, careening into a long yawn. "Anywhere you want," he murmurs, sleepiness coming back to him in a spell. "That's _my_ secret, Yuuri."

"Lights," Yuuri says, and the lights go so soft that Victor surely cannot make out the shape of his smile through the darkness. "Sweet dreams, Victor."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [“The mother's feet, plump and polite, descended like white pigeons from the sea of pillow, across the linoleum roses, down down the wooden stairs, over the chalk hopscotch squares, 5, 6, 7, blue sky.”](https://www.sausd.us/cms/lib/CA01000471/Centricity/Domain/457/The%20House%20on%20Mango%20Street.pdf) — The House On Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros


	8. Chapter 8

They plan their trip to New Vegas later in Yuuri's bunk after Victor has woken up from his extended catnap. Victor has a little handkerchief tucked into the back of his collar like a schoolboy, and his hair is tousled and he's sleepy-eyed and really, just—an entirely docile and primitive creature, demurely waiting for Yuuri to let him go back to sleep.

Yuuri is not going to let him go back to sleep. Yuuri just spent two hours convincing Chris to move out of his elegant, first-deck captain's quarters in increasingly unchaste ways so that Isabella Yang would have just barely enough room to facilitate the beginnings of a family. Yuuri has performance reviews next week with a man he just kicked out of his own home, and he is not looking forward to them.

(He doesn't know why he has performance reviews with Chris. Chris does not supervise him. If Chris does supervise him then he's certainly not supposed to be doing so. But Chris has been doing his performance reviews for as long as Yuuri's been onboard because Otabek will not fight him on this no matter how dearly Yuuri wants him to.)

So he's not endeared in the least by the way Victor pouts at him over the cafeteria table, looking all distressed and misplaced and longing for his bed, as if he couldn't possibly understand why he's been dragged out to the mess hall at midnight to organise a day trip to ruddy luminaries. Unfortunately for him, Yuuri still has not recovered from returning to the botanical gardens more or less empty-handed and being confronted by Phichit about 'wasting time' and being 'so awful' and abandoning ship to 'run off and despoil that poor innocent boy!'

As if Victor has ever come close to such a thing.

Yuuri's back aches ferociously from being made to haul around sacks of soil while Phichit had sat and lorded over him with his feet propped up on King Tiberius. He'd been less than pleased that Yuuri had done nothing in the way of planning and also that he'd somehow neglected to even mention the phrase 'New Vegas Luminaries' to Victor—who has just emptied out an entire napkin holder and made a little pillow for himself on which he is now trying to go back to sleep.

"Hey. _Hey_." Yuuri picks up a plastic fork and uses it to brush Victor's bangs (bang?) out of his face. "You're just tired because you haven't eaten breakfast yet. Eat your egg roll."

"My egg roll is cold."

"It's supposed to be cold," Yuuri says despairingly. Victor is worldly. He's had egg rolls before.

"Mmm," Victor hums. He leans his chin on his hand, staring vacuously into space. There's a tear of fruit nectar at the corner of his mouth, and droplets of water on the inside of his wrist from the condensation on his glass. Sometimes Yuuri thinks he's paying too much attention to these things. He picks up a napkin and pats Victor's chin anyway, if only to spur him into action.

It works. Of course it works. Victor's empty-headed gaze flits back and settle on Yuuri like he's easy to look at, a drowsy, appeasing smile on his face.

"Okay so, we're _here—_ " Yuuri prods a point on the map in front of him with his fork "—now you point to where we're going."

When Yuuri looks up, Victor is pointing bleary-eyed at the exit doors. He sighs.

"Let's try this again tomorrow…"

  

*

 

Minami is getting better at being left alone. That's what Yuuri's been telling himself. Minami doesn't cry when Yuuri off-handedly mentions that he'll be leaving— _again—_ for a few days to pick up cargo.

Still, Yuuri knows Minami, in the way you can't help once you've fed someone through a growth spurt as atrocious as Minami's and prodded them all the way through med school. This boy runs like clockwork. So of course he notices when, for whatever reason, Minami starts working out on the regular without Yuuri nagging him about it. Of course he notices Minami diving out of the medbay early for his lunch break when there's always at least two hot lunch boxes in the nurse's room for the express purpose of keeping this boy happy.

At first he thinks it's a girl, and then when he mentions it in passing to Victor one morning over breakfast, Victor has the audacity to tell him, "I saw Yuri shove him into a storage closet last week."

He adds, "What? It's puppy love. It's cute," when Yuuri makes a face at him.

God, it's so much worse than a girl. And it's so early, too.

"Are you going to eat that?" Victor points at the turkey sausage on Yuuri's plate.

Yuuri bats his hand away. "All you do is ruin my life plans!"

"You never were a morning person," Victor says mildly, taking a sip of his coffee. He steals the sausage anyway when Yuuri puts his head in his hands.

 

*

 

They board for New Vegas later in the month on a late night, long after everyone else has gone to sleep. Victor drags Yuuri out of his cabin at three in the morning because Victor is just that obnoxious, which is Yuuri's reason for sitting idly in the cockpit and watching with shallow interest as Victor lugs heavy boxes of supplies into the cargo storage unit.

Yuuri likes watching Victor perform heavy manual labor. He secretly wishes Victor was wearing a shirt so he could take it off and use it to wipe the glistening sweat off his forehead. It's a shame about space, and it never being quite warm enough for gratuitous shirtlessness. They'll change into civilian clothing later, once _Lutetia_ has pierced the force field generated over the open mouth of the hangar and the jet is warm and pressurized, but by then Victor will be sadly devoid of pearly sweat and busy spinning round in his pilot chair. Yuuri is so _deprived._

"You're sure you don't want to help?" Victor grunts. "This would go a lot faster if you did."

"I've had performance evaluation meetings all day." Yuuri frowns at him. This isn't difficult to understand. "I'm _tired_."

"Forgive me," Victor says blandly. He's almost done anyway. He's just posturing at this point. "How was the meeting?"

Yuuri is very interested in recontextualizing that sentence one day, but he pushes that thought to the back of his mind and tries to focus on something besides the mental image of Victor plopping down on his lap on the couch after he's come home from work, with a glass of wine and a kiss on the cheek and one hand loosening Yuuri's ugly tie—

"—It was okay," Yuuri mumbles, looking determinedly somewhere else. "Chris always does my evaluations instead of Otabek, so. I guess I can't expect much."

Most days he's grateful he's never had to sit in Otabek's office and be confronted by the fact that Yuuri's only really Otabek's first officer by virtue of his no-good-very-bad crush, which he's been trying to beat to death with a stick for upwards of half a decade. Sometimes he thinks Otabek _knows_ , has always known, and is endeared by the idea but still can't compliment Yuuri without the both of them being unable to look in each other's general direction for several minutes afterwards. That would be very poignant and sweet of Otabek, who is just a poignant and sweet person all around. Sometimes he remembers in all the years he's worked under Otabek, Yuuri's only ever seen him smile at the dopey angelfish in the ship aquarium that accepts his tiny offerings of clementine pulp.

Somehow Yuuri doesn't mention the part about his crush to Victor, but he seems to pick up on it anyway.

Victor furrows his brows. "Do you think he's…cute?"

Yuuri tugs at his collar and stammers, "Well I—when I first joined I thought he was...nice." No he didn't. "I mean, he's my superior officer anyway so you know, I couldn't, um."

Victor stares bewilderedly at him. "What does he have that I don't?" he asks, and when Yuuri mutters something off to the side about ' _a proper haircut,_ ' Victor shoots him a scathing glare. He's just teasing, of course, but really he was so _enchanted_ with Victor's hair when he was younger and now there's so tragically little of it.

"But he's _old_ ," Victor points out.

"Hmmm," Yuuri says, as if he's never, ever thought about this. "You don't think he has that silver fox thing going on?"

Victor grumbles wordlessly under his breath. Yuuri does not tell him that if Victor ever aspired to be a silver fox, he wouldn't have to work too hard, because that would just upset him even more.

Usually he'd never dream of speaking about Otabek like this, and he thought he'd die a repressed and tragic thing because of it but God, Victor looks so flustered and confounded next to him that it's easy to forget this is the same Victor who Yuuri is pretty sure has left a trail of broken hearts behind him down stellar highways and who, in the end, was the one that chose to leave, after everything.

Fortunately, the end is over and done with now. The time is ripe for gallivanting around space with your old college boyfriend.

Yuuri yawns and drops his cheap romance novella into his lap and lets his arms dangle limp at his side, his body crept up on by a heavy languor. He wants to bat at the fuzzy dice Victor has scrounged up from somewhere and pinned to the roof of his console, but he doesn't move. He's pretty, _pretty_ sure that they're only there because lately Yuuri has been spending a disproportionate amount of time sitting in the copilot seat of this particular cockpit, and now Victor's started decorating in an attempt to keep luring him in using ugly pawn shop merchandise.

"I'm going to bed," Yuuri announces, getting to his feet. "Feel free to stay here and do your job," he adds when Victor eyes him interestedly.

"Right," Victor says, sounding suspiciously compliant. "I'll just sit here then. And pilot the jet. For fourteen hours."

Yuuri narrows his eyes at him, already at the cockpit's archway.

"By myself." Victor sighs. " _Alone_." He looks back at Yuuri to gauge how much sympathy he's getting out of this. "Nobody to keep me from falling asleep and—"

"I'm leaving," Yuuri says, and then, "I better still be alive when I wake up," which earns him a sparkling laugh from Victor.

Victor's bed in _Lutetia's_ cargo storage unit is less of a bed and more a pile of wrinkled bedsheets atop a cheap slab of green mattress foam, but it's horizontal and it's fractionally more comfortable than the floor. The setup is personable enough that the sheer trashiness of it all is tolerable. Victor keeps his mysteriously charming quilt rolled up at the foot of the mattress and his pillow smells sweetly of his weird musk when Yuuri buries his face in it.

He should buy Victor something with memory foam, he thinks as he shuffles around to make himself comfortable—and some sheets with a higher thread count if he's going to spend as much time in Victor's jet as he does.

He tries to sleep but feels uneasy. The low purr of _Lutetia's_ engines are a strange and subtle reminder of how far he's come, leaving a winding path behind him and cutting through the cosmic wilderness, only to end up with the same affectionate urges lain over him, for the same chronically loveable idiot—he pinches the bridge of his nose and groans out loud. What's the opposite of star-crossed, he wonders, and also is he really going to let Victor pilot a jet on three hours of sleep? Because it's questionable enough that Victor hasn't already come crawling to keep Yuuri warm, by graciously, _chivalrously_ wrapping himself around him.

Fate, Yuuri thinks, is already pushing it for the two of them. He would rather not let all of that go to waste by allowing Victor to get them both killed in an intensely embarrassing, sleep-deprived fiery explosion.

He stands in the archway of the cockpit and only moments after he says, "Come to bed," with his hair all appeasingly tousled and his shirt hanging off his shoulder does Victor cut the engines, leave _Lutetia_ drifting slowly in space, and usher Yuuri back under his quilt, equal parts amused and heartbreakingly tender as he hovers over him.

"I'm not too tired," Victor promises. He's kneeling down by the mattress and Yuuri is making a sour face at him, his expression softened only by the fact that Victor has pushed the quilt right up to his chin and essentially swaddled him. "Have some faith in me!"

" _Never_ ," Yuuri spits, trying for cutting and obviously failing because Victor just looks entertained. He is so _sick_ of sleeping alone.

"We're never going to get anywhere like this, you know that," Victor tells him sternly, patting his cheek.

Victor tucks him in and bids him a good night despite all the venomous looks Yuuri gives him.

 

*

 

Yuuri wakes up to the unsettling sound of loud, metal rattling and the more unsettling sight of Victor standing over him, dressed in his EVA suit again, peering out the window with a look of close-lipped concern. He's focusing too much on something in the far distance to notice Yuuri stirring beneath him.

"Victor?" Yuuri mumbles, squinting up at him—at his face framed in shifting starlight, the lines beneath his eyes at odds with the downy peach fuzz on his jaw. This is hardly the dreamy boy he dated in college, who for all the world seemed as if he had lived locked up inside of a star for sixteen years, but still Yuuri wants to drag him down anyway, and keep him so close that they might fuse into one.

Victor steps away from the window and only looks down when Yuuri pats his calf to get his attention.

Yuuri says, "You woke me up," and Victor's expression darkens. He looks like he's thinking too hard. "Come here," Yuuri orders, propping himself up on his elbows.

Victor crouches down and sits seiza by him, strangely obedient. God, sometimes it's like looking at a time capsule. Yuuri thinks he could lift Victor's chin and find a fresh hickey lain across the milky skin of his neck, left by a different himself.

"How long will you be?"

"I'm not sure." At Yuuri's scowl, Victor _tsks_ and says, "Don't be like that. You can take care of yourself for a little while."

Yuuri gives him a blank look, and then grumbles, because that wasn't the point. Victor looks so delicate in his EVA suit, damning in the way it clings to him—a bomb-bright thing that glitters ruby red in the faintest of light like a warning sign. Yuuri thinks distantly of painted butterflies and mantises, and their singular, aposematic promise: _Don't hurt me and I won't hurt you_.

Sometimes Victor's hips look narrow enough for an illusion of strength, his torso drawn like a square cut gem. Sometimes he looks easier to soil than pure white bedding, like a kiss on the hip would savage him.

"You're not scared?" Yuuri asks, almost inaudible even in the still silence of the cabin.

"No, but…" Victor purses his lips. "I wouldn't mind a little good luck."

The glint in his eye may just be the reflection of a shooting star, cutting past behind Yuuri where he can't see it. It may also be the way Yuuri's tongue darts out to wet his lips, the way he takes a shallow breath and murmurs, "If you don't mind," before pressing a kiss to the cool skin of Victor's cheek.

He should say his peace to the universe. There's a little patch of pink on Victor's face where Yuuri kissed him and he wonders absently what it is—because it's not lipstick—and then he realizes that Victor is blushing.

 _That's nice_ , Yuuri thinks, before Victor very irritatingly says, "Did you just kiss me because you think I'm going to die?"

Yuuri's face screws up in disapproval. "Go away."

"Yuuri!" Victor wails, jostling Yuuri's shoulder when he lies back down and shuffles to face away from him. Yuuri's not so sure how he ended up lost on this man.

When Victor doesn't get a response and Yuuri keeps stubbornly ignoring his pleas for an explanation, he storms off and mutters something along the lines of 'unbelievable' and 'so confusing' and 'hardbodied little tease' which incidentally makes Yuuri want to strangle him, but anyway.

Eventually Victor pushes off, tethered to what may as well be a rope of gum and taffy—and Yuuri, just to spite him, yanks down the shutter when Victor swims down in front of the window and winks at him, his hair floating serenely in zero-g.

The rattling sounds soon stop, replaced by erratic tinkering noises which are fractionally less annoying. Yuuri resolutely doesn't peek through the window. He heads back to sleep.

 

*

 

When Yuuri wakes up again, he doesn't know how much time has passed since. Clocks are largely superfluous machines for voyagers, so of course Victor doesn't have one lying around his jet. The only indication that any time has passed at all is the mere feeling that he's been out cold for a while now, and really that's not much of an indication at all. Planetside, it's easier. On a ship with its own time cycle, it's easier.

When you're all by yourself in the remote backwaters of deep space, your body does what it wants and honestly, who knows what it wants.

Oh, he wants to see if Victor's come back yet. Safe and sound, or maybe if Yuuri's lucky he'll have a minor scrape on his face and Yuuri will get to kiss it better and baby him about it.

He's alone in the cargo storage unit, so he crawls out of bed and into the cockpit, where Victor should be piloting again, or painting his nails, or whatever it is he does when he's not being supervised.

But the cockpit is empty. Victor isn't anywhere. Yuuri pauses in his tracks and in that moment he realizes that the jet is entirely silent. The engines are still dead. He can't hear repairs, but that makes sense, doesn't it, there's no sound in space, there wouldn't be unless something was literally slamming into the ship—

—he frowns, and marches back into the cargo storage unit to push up the window shutter. Nothing.

He taps his fingers anxiously on the window, caught up in his own racing speculations—and then a pebble gets flung against the window and sends Yuuri jumping six inches into the air.

Which, he supposes, means that he has to get into his EVA suit and rescue this idiot, or join him on the roof of the jet for stargazing. He knows why he bothers, though, so he grabs a zip gun and puts up his bubble helmet before pushing himself out of airlock.

There’s a moment, impossibly short, of tear-jerking cold before the suit’s biotic regulation kicks in. It’s more than enough to wake him up and make him tap at his wrist to open a comm line.

"Victor," he says, when the comm line locks onto the nearest suit. "Victor, what are you doing out here?"

He peers around, and sees nothing. The back of his neck goes hot. The other side of the ship, then.

His wristband bleeps with a distress signal. Yuuri stares at it.

"You’re overdoing this," he says finally, peering down at the coordinates. “You’re not even that far away!” he complains.

"I thought you might like directions," Victor’s voice crackles through his headset. “My tether snapped. In case you’re interested at all.”

"You just love making me worry," Yuuri grumbles. “I’m coming, okay? Don’t move.”

He clambers over the hull of the jet using footholds until he sees Victor, drifting lazily with his arms folded across his chest like he’s sulking. Yuuri laughs when he sees him. Partly out of relief; partly because Victor looks so disgruntled at being found like this.

“Ah,” Yuuri says. “I haven’t used this thing in a while.” He glances down at his zip gun—a clunky, misshapen thing that acts more or less like a tiny fire extinguisher—and then back at Victor, who may or may not be raising a judgmental eyebrow at him.

Victor’s far enough that he gets an eyeful of Yuuri clumsily struggling with his zip gun. Each impulse sends the world spinning, jets of pressurized air that push him a little closer to Victor each time.

Yuuri wants to throw up by the time Victor’s is within arm's reach. If he were more gentlemanly, he’d throw out his hand and let Victor pull him in those last few inches. Instead he’s dizzy and impatient, so he grabs Victor’s ankle—and hears Victor shriek in his shock and outrage—and essentially climbs his way up, until the two of them are face-to-face, flushed and unsteady and irritated.

“Finally,” Victor says, a little breathy. His hand trembles ever so slightly as he reaches out and curls his fingers around Yuuri’s waist to drag them closer together, their navels swaying and bubble helmets clinking against each other like flutes of champagne in a toast. “That was terrible.”

Yuuri nods his assent, less focused on that and more on the sweat on Victor’s neck when he lolls his head back in exasperation. It’s hard to say if he’s paler than usual.

“How long have you been out here?” Yuuri asks. He looks down at the damp hollow of his collarbone, the strained flex of his throat, and wraps his hand gingerly around Victor’s elbow as if to ground him. He knits his eyebrows at the way Victor tenses, his whole body stiff and uneasy. “Victor?”

“I don’t know.” Victor takes a shuddery breath. “I don’t know,” he repeats, “but long enough that I think I’m running out of air.”

Which confuses Yuuri, until he studies Victor’s EVA suit a little closer and notices how _old_ it looks, worn out and outdated—the fact that his distress signal is simply a coordinate ping and not a biometric statistic relay, the fact that he couldn’t comm with real clarity until Yuuri had closed in on his breathing space. _Irresponsible_ , he wants to say, but he also imagines that it’s a matter of money, and enough of it that Victor wouldn’t casually ask him to shell out cash for a new one. ‘Buy me heels because you get off on it’ is not the same as ‘Buy me insurance because you care about me.’

Yuuri bites his lip. “We’ll get back soon,” he murmurs. “Put your arms around me."

Victor is apparently still spirited enough to purr a little at that, a half-hearted “Oooh, _Yuuri_ ,” which would be aggravating except that he’s practically wheezing, and it’s sending Yuuri's inner paramedic into overdrive. He feels like he could combust with the way Victor’s hands shake. His hold on Yuuri is superficial. Yuuri gnaws the inside of his cheek and it feels strange to wrap his arm around Victor’s waist in this way, this context, like he’s trying to save a life. It’s not like he’s unused to the feeling, but he can’t reconcile it with this image of Victor, quiet and motionless against him.

The first impulse from the zip gun sends them hurtling, because Yuuri’s not thinking properly and he’s in a rush to get back to the jet—and above all, he was never good at this. This was all Victor, back in the halcyon days of the space training program, when Yuuri would hold Victor’s hand and Victor would always know exactly where their shared center of mass was. Yuuri imagines that their instructors would have told them about the swirl of debris and stars and how it would render them useless if they didn’t make all the right maneuvers.

Incidentally he also imagines he’d been too distracted to take in all this information, because he'd been holding Victor’s hand, and because Victor was teasing him by rubbing his thumb along Yuuri’s wrist, and in any case Victor was distracting no matter what he was doing, so it’d been a hopeless case right from the very beginning.

It’s always been Victor who knows the way home, but right now he’s limp and his breaths are coming shallow. He groans with the next impulse, and Yuuri digs his nails into the nodes of Victor’s spine, claws near possessive like a wild and fevered animal. If Victor were anywhere near lucid enough to comprehend the reason why, Yuuri might try to assure him, _It’s not what it looks like. You better believe I’m not falling in love with you again._

In the end Victor always gives him excuses to be shameless. Just the sight of him is awful and wrenching, his eyes half-closed and glittering with tears. With his head lolling uselessly against Yuuri’s shoulder, he says, “Please don’t let me go.”

Yuuri swallows. That’s going to leave a bruise.

“It’s okay,” he promises, his throat abruptly raw. “Stay close to me.”

He wants to hold Victor fast at the same time he wants to gentle his iron grip because he’s scared of squeezing out what little air Victor still has to breathe. Out here there’s no help around for millions of miles if he gets hurt; only Victor, close-eyed and drowning, and Yuuri, locked in a quantum superposition of the heart.

Victor winces with the final impulse of the zip gun. He screws his eyes shut when Yuuri crashes against the ship with his back to the hatch and their chests bump against each other.

“Are you alright?” Yuuri gasps. Briefly he does have to let go of Victor to open the airlock hatch, and then he has pull Victor through with him as he prays for the least of trouble.

Victor doesn’t wince when Yuuri slams the hatch closed with a loud bang, which Yuuri finds unduly worrying. In the few seconds that it takes to re-pressurize airlock, Victor’s tears float off his face in pearls, and Yuuri can’t help but sit and stare at the way they orbit him, like precious tiny satellites. He freezes up in panic when they abruptly drop down to the collar structure of his helmet, and when he manages to put down Victor’s bubble there’s a thin trail of moisture on his neck. Because he’s honestly unhinged, he wants to lick them clean, but—maybe another time. When Victor isn’t being threatened with anoxia.

“Come here,” Yuuri grumbles, mostly to himself because Victor’s passing out in his arms.

He carries Victor bridal style over to the mattress, and lays him down as slowly as he can bear. Victor lies there, a dewy film of sweat on his skin, his eyes closed in sleep and his face uncommonly expressionless. Not quite peaceful. More like seraphic. The feeling that’s been burgeoning in the back of Yuuri’s mind seems to come into focus, now that he’s been faced with this. He hates missing Victor when he’s right there.

Yuuri is hideously afraid to check his pulse, but more than likely it’s jackhammering.

Time passes. There’s nothing he can do. Too much time passes. The adrenaline fades and doesn’t keep at bay Yuuri’s full-bodied exhaustion for much longer, but the anxiety is a constant, the feeling of getting lost in a mall, of trampling down an empty beach.

Later it dawns on Yuuri that if Victor doesn’t wake up, he'll die, but the idea seems so far-removed from actuality that Yuuri doesn’t even pretend to entertain it.

It's hard to leave Victor alone. It goes against his every instinct, instilled in him by years of priming for emergencies, medical training, and Victor plying him for attention as both a needy teenager and an impossibly needier adult. But there's something about the passage of time. If Yuuri watches over him, waiting for him to wake up, it'll be like watching the core of an apple gradually mottle. It won't happen, it's not happening, it's never going to happen—

Healing in particular seems to stop dead in its tracks if you watch too closely. Yuuri has never witnessed precisely the formation of a scab in all his years of licking wounds.

So he sits in the cockpit—in Victor's chair—and for some reason Victor's jet is equipped with a crystalline sound system, for some reason he has old Italian love songs lying haphazardly around the place. Yuuri plays them with the volume turned down low, the way he would if he didn’t want Victor to wake up, because it helps, even if fractionally, to take his mind off of things.

Yuuri finds his book, its pages dog-eared and the paper thin and the spine cracked into barcode lines. It isn't easy to concentrate, not while Victor is unconscious in the very next room, identical to Princess Aurora if not for the absence of an enchanted rose, but he tries to get through it anyway without constantly looking over his shoulder.

He taps his fingers on the armrests. Slumps in Victor’s chair and makes a point of sinking in; his kingdom now. Soon someone will be back to reclaim it.

But sitting still doesn't feel right, however much Yuuri tries to take his mind off things. He isn't used to staring at the same stars for so long. His romance novel lays discarded on the floor, split open in the middle of a breathtaking first kiss in twilight time.

Unwisely, he peers into the cargo unit. Victor’s hair is cast about his lovely head in rivulets. His mouth is slightly parted, Yuuri notices, when he creeps closer. His eyes are still closed. This is not the part where Yuuri kisses him and breaks the curse. Yuuri has a hand on Victor’s chest and he can feel the tender rise and fall of it.

“Hello," Yuuri says, very quietly, like he's nursing a baby bird and he's afraid of scaring it off before he can rightly help it.

There's no response from Victor; no such evidence that Yuuri's message made it through to the other side at all.

“Be like that, then," Yuuri says halfheartedly, and storms back to the cockpit to reconquer Victor's chair.

 

*

 

When Victor does wake up, because of course he does, naturally the first thing he chooses to comment on is the choice of music, rather than Yuuri gawping at him in the archway, wide-eyed and wonderfully bewildered.

“You like," Victor murmurs, turning his head on the pillow to look at him, “Gagliardo?"

Yuuri has one hand on his hip in an imitation of nonchalance. The truth is that he has no idea who Gagliardo is. The truth is that his knees are quivering. If this room wasn't only lit by faint starlight then Victor would be able to make out every line in his body pulled taut like a moon-drawn ocean.

Yuuri moves towards him slowly so as to not make waves. Victor still looks so delicate. The color hasn't yet come back to his face, but at the very least he seems relaxed now. Yuuri leans over him a little bit, peering down at Victor's questioning expression until he realizes he's left Victor’s question unanswered—Not that he can bring himself to care. Victor's _awake._

“Want to know what the lyrics mean?" Victor asks. What Yuuri wants is for Victor to ask for a glass of water so Yuuri has an excuse to indulgently fuss over him, but he can stand to humor Victor a little longer.

“I didn't know you spoke Italian," Yuuri says, genuinely intrigued though he's not surprised. He thinks Victor probably speaks anything as long as it's contained within a love song.

Victor shrugs. Or he tries to. Maybe his shoulders are too heavy. Are they too heavy? Yuuri frowns and touches his shoulder—no. They're perfect the way they are.

He sighs. It feels like he's giving into something here. He tries not to think about it too hard when he rests his head perpendicular to Victor’s on the pillow. He's lying on the cold hard floor of the jet, but he finds that he doesn't really mind.

“You scared me," he admits.

“Good," Victor says, not unkindly, staring vacuously up at the ceiling.

“I thought you'd gone into a coma." Yuuri turns his head slightly to look at Victor, who looks right back at him, seeming only pleased with himself. Yuuri doesn’t sound as light as he'd like when he says, “I don't think I could handle it if you…”

He trails off. Victor knits his brows. “Get off the floor. Come up here," he says, shuffling up against the wall and patting the empty mattress space beside him. Cautiously, Yuuri obliges, though Victor looks disapproving when Yuuri goes out of his way to ensure there's a inch of space between them.

“So skittish," Victor says, pinching and pulling at the elastic fabric of Yuuri’s EVA suit. He lets go, and the fabric snaps back against Yuuri's stomach and makes him flinch. “You should know by now…" he croons, "that I couldn't possibly be any more taken with you."

A brief pause, and then Yuuri, as gently as he can, knees him in the stomach. “You're delirious."

“I assure you I'm not," Victor tells him sullenly.

“You've been oxygen deprived for God knows how long," Yuuri says. Though so far it really doesn't seem to have made much of an impact on Victor’s discretion. He presses a finger to Victor's sternum. “But you can try confessing to me later. When you're capable of standing up by yourself. For now, try not to move too much,” Yuuri tells him.

A moment passes during which Victor seems to steel his resolve and then he tries, very pathetically, to prop himself up. Yuuri presses a palm to his chest and promptly flattens him. Then, in a cunningly devised attempt to get rid of the truly forlorn look on Victor’s face, Yuuri throws the quilt over the both of them and beneath it, lets his hand drift to the soft slope of Victor's hip.

“You think you can ply me with your caresses," Victor says in mock scorn, making no move to dislodge Yuuri's hand.

Yuuri stares blankly at him. “Yes?" he says, like it's obvious.

“You're right." Victor sighs, his hand straying to his forehead like he'd be swooning if not for the fact that Yuuri refuses to let him get out of bed. “How can I resist you? You were like a—" he cups Yuuri's jaw and squeezes meaningfully, somehow "—a sexy…space…fireman out there! You were so brave!"

As opposed to what, Yuuri wonders, besides letting the both of them die gruesomely in wretched nowhere. “It wasn't supposed to be romantic," Yuuri grumbles. Victor has no right acting so ardently.

“But you _rescued_ me," Victor wails, and Yuuri is alarmed by just how emotional he sounds, so he takes to awkwardly patting Victor's hip—which only serves to exacerbate things, Yuuri notes fretfully. “You don't even care!" Victor snaps, his chin wrinkling in a pout, his eyes all glimmer-y with tears and extra pretty because of it.

Yuuri bolts up at that, unsure of how he's managed to screw this up. He knits his fingers together to keep himself from doing something extraordinarily stupid, like smoothing Victor’s hair out of his puffy face and kissing the tear tracks not yet dried on his cheeks.

In a way this is Victor's fault, as so many things are, because he looks so pretty when he's sad and Yuuri, without realizing it, seems to have evolved to always try and pull this sadness from right out of him. Firstly to expel it, and secondly because Yuuri likes the way it looks all splayed out on Victor's pretty, mean face.

“Such a crybaby," Yuuri scolds quietly, and he ends up doing that thing anyway where he twirls Victor’s sweat damp hair around his fingers and brushes it away from his face. He also pulls on Victor's hair, just a little bit, because he’s helpless to resist. Victor won’t even deign to look at him. His arms are still folded across his chest but now it's not so angelic as it is sulking. “Is this what i get for rescuing you?"

“You don't get a reward for not letting me die," Victor spits.

“Oh really," Yuuri says drily. If he hadn't wooed this boy in college he might have a harder time keeping up with these rapidfire mood swings. “Well I didn't mean to bother you. I’ll just be leaving you alone then." And then he purposefully starts to turn away, feigned indifference in the line of his shoulders and the low tilt of his chin, until a subtle twitch from Victor evolves into a pair of arms around his middle, pulling him assuredly back into a spool of bed sheets. He’s really too weak to make much more than an impression, but the impression alone is what counts.

“Oh no you don't," Victor tells him in no uncertainty. Over his shoulder, Yuuri grins catlike at him. “You can't leave until i say so."

Yuuri considers him for a moment, and then says, “On your stomach." At Victor’s puzzled look, he unhelpfully adds, “Doctor's orders."

Well, Victor’s willful but he's also too curious for his own good, so Yuuri gets as far as unfastening Victor's EVA suit down to the small of his back in a single swift movement before Victor shows any sign of alarm. Yuuri pokes and nudges Victor's back dimples, and doesn't have to wait too long for Victor to hunch his shoulders and stiffen beneath him like a displeased cat—only Yuuri knows this is more to do with embarrassment than any kind of pain.

Understandably he feels the need to say, “This isn't a sex thing."

“Convincing," Victor grunts, and then sighs into a pillow when Yuuri starts kneading the muscle beneath his shoulder blades.

He prefers to use oil for this, likes the warmth and the texture and the smell of it, but there's none on board and anyway, he knows it feels uncomfortably greasy once it's cooled. Victor doesn't seem to think he's missing out on anything, just hums in pleasure when Yuuri plants his palms flat against Victor’s back and rubs him down.

It's nothing painful, at first, and Victor stretches out beneath him looking so luxurious that Yuuri would suspect he'd fallen asleep if not for the little noises Victor makes at his hands. He doesn't seem to mind when Yuuri shifts to sit on top of Victor’s back and perches there, as long as he keeps getting felt up in mysteriously enjoyable ways.

Yuuri lets it continue like that for a while, until pleasure after pleasure becomes redundant and he inevitably gets bored.

“Mmph—" Victor braces beneath him when Yuuri starts working at a knot in his shoulder “—ow, _ah_ , what is that—"

“—You're tense,” Yuuri brushes him off. Victor is not getting away with almost dying in space without a little rough handling.

“I’m not tense,” Victor insists. He arches taut beneath Yuuri, abruptly broken out of his pleasant stupor. “Or I wasn't until you started doing _that_.”

‘That’ being Yuuri digging his elbow into deep tissue with a vengeance. Yuuri drapes himself over Victor’s back and hushes him. He opts for something that won't make Victor whine as much.

He still whines, of course—he'd mope if Yuuri so much as flicked his ear—but at least he shuts up when Yuuri switches to using his thumb and forefinger on a particular knot. Or maybe it's because Yuuri's suddenly pressed against him. Victor’s unusually still beneath him, quiet enough that Yuuri can make out his strained breaths even though they’re muffled by the pillowcase.

“You'll feel better later," Yuuri says. He could pretend that the massage earlier was for circulation and not simply to sweeten Victor up and lower his defenses. Yuuri pauses, and walks two fingers up Victor’s neck. He’s very comfortable, sprawling out on Victor's back like this. He murmurs, “This is the best I can do for now, but when we get back…do you know what I’m going to do to you?"

Victor shivers beneath him. “Tell me."

Yuuri closes his eyes and sighs into the back of Victor’s neck before he does. “I’m going to give you a SPECT scan," Yuuri says lowly. “And I’m also putting you on a curfew."

Victor does not say anything until he _does_ , and when he does he also rolls onto his back without warning, which dislodges Yuuri from the nice little nest he's made for himself on Victor’s back.

“You think you're so funny," Victor says dryly, peering up at him all riled up and resentful.

“And you're banned from ever taking the jet without bringing a co-pilot and a trained medical professional with you."

“I brought a trained medical professional with me and all he did was fondle me—"

“And clearly you're suffering memory loss, so I’m also putting you down for MRS." Yuuri stabs his index finger at Victor’s chest as he says this. Victor fixes the offending digit with a contemptuous glare. “If you're rude to me anymore I'll put you on a liquid diet."

“I don't know why I let you drag me out here," Victor says ruefully.

“Because you're crazy about me," Yuuri drawls. “Move over, I’m sleepy.”

There's something to be said about bedside manner here, probably, but if Victor thinks the same then he chooses not to comment. He makes space for Yuuri to hunker down besides him, and is obediently quiet as Yuuri gives him one last inspection before giving a minute shake of the head and letting his eyes fall closed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here are some science things i am excited to share with you, which i found during the dubious research i do for this fic
> 
> the 'zip gun' referred to in this chapter is analogous to the real-life Hand-Held Self-Maneuvering Unit which astronauts use to move around in zero-g during spacewalks. it looks like [this](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/81/USAF_Astronaut_Maneuvering_Unit.jpg/187px-USAF_Astronaut_Maneuvering_Unit.jpg), but when i first read about it i pictured it like the [manmelter from tf2](https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1081139558208586669/17F21678A1953D3011C53FFB48117CEBFD1AA8C7/) so…that's what it is now. you can read about the AMU [here](https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4219/Chapter13.html).
> 
> "the aposematic promise" i am referring to is the tendency of certain animals to brightly color themselves as a warning to predators that may feel tempted to eat them when they are toxic. here is [a really good-looking bug](https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2015/03/09/orchid-mantis-does-it-really-mimic-an-orchid/), which may seem mimetic but is actually aposematic.
> 
> during the writing of this fic i decided to spare you all from a really irritating evolution metaphor which was inspired by this (very sweet, in my opinion) [essay](http://www.myteacherpages.com/webpages/DLuff/files/how%20flowers%20changed%20the%20world%20essay.pdf) on the evolution on flowers, and how they have made planet earth gentler on the humans inhabiting it. i implore you to read this if nothing else
> 
> finally, i feel obligated to inform you all that in zero-g, tears don't float off one's face in beautiful buoyant ghibli droplets as seen in Gravity (2013). instead they stick to your face in a kind of ugly way, [because surface tension](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1v5gtOkyCG0), unless you are victor nikiforov and your acid mantle repels water for maximum pretty boy effects
> 
> oh, and [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljDcvhkRuOc) is the italian love song that victor has lying around, and [here](http://lyricstranslate.com/en/che-vuole-questa-musica-stasera-who-wants-music-tonight.html) is what the lyrics mean because like....of course


	9. Chapter 9

There's a lot of discussion about what Victor is and is not allowed to do after his little fling with oxygen deprivation, and it mostly consists of Yuuri doting, equal parts exasperated and amused by the way Victor insists on prancing around the jet like a fresh baby deer. Victor won't stop belting out Air Supply and he keeps getting distracted by his reflection in the mirror and he's walked into the shelf _five times_ today, which could be short-term damage or it could just be Victor, playing at his world-class 'I'm a ditz, fuck me' routine.

"Stop running around," Yuuri chides from the mattress. He's exasperated. He's taken three stress naps already and Victor has interrupted all of them. "You're making me nervous." Victor pauses in his pacing to look over at him. "Come over here. Lie down."

Victor crawls over to him and hangs his head so close to Yuuri's face that it blots out the ceiling light, like a moon eclipsing a sun.

"You're like a chicken," Yuuri scolds, and he only narrowly avoids wrapping his limbs around Victor and manhandling him into staying still. This is still technically a work trip, so he and Victor are to be strictly professional.

"…But I'm your chicken," Victor says thoughtfully after a moment of silence. Professionalism is dead and Victor Nikiforov stabbed it sixteen times in the chest.

Victor arranges himself on the mattress so he can tuck himself into the nautilus shell of Yuuri's arm like the slimy little mollusc that he is. Somehow Victor is quite heavy at the same time that he is also quite graceful. He keeps tapping his fingers against Yuuri's chest. "I'm so bored."

"You're always bored," Yuuri says, staring absently up at the ceiling and not at Victor's pushy 'pay attention to me' nuzzling, which he can feel because Victor's incisors are gently grazing the side of his ribcage. "I should stop taking you out. You're very spoilt." _So_ spoilt. Undoubtedly it's Yuuri's fault, but he's not about to lay claim to it.

Victor _mmphs_ against him. "You love taking me out."

Yuuri doesn't really take Victor out so much as he overbooks his schedule, which—letting him constantly steal Victor away for himself is a huge mistake on administration's part. Because of him nobody else in the entire universe gets to behold such a flower as Victor Nikiforov curled up against them, all clingy and soft-centred. Yuuri feels like he's accidentally lured a tiny kitten into falling asleep on the nape of his neck.

"You know if anyone ever finds out that I've been spending time with you voluntarily it'll be scandalous," Yuuri tells him somberly. He's mostly joking.

"Because you're sleeping with Chris?"

"What?" Yuuri snaps. He finally looks down at Victor, whose face is stupidly innocent and ripe for the pinching. "No. I don't understand where you hear these things."

"The nurses told me," Victor says, and he still looks perfectly earnest, gazing up at Yuuri like he's worried he's going to be indignant about it.

Yuuri pinches the bridge of his nose. He likes _Cupid's_ nurses, and they're well-mannered and diligent and respectable colleagues––but they're all shifty as hell and live vicariously through his infatuations. They've got a whole policy written up on who Yuuri's allowed to date and who he can get to second base with, because Otabek lets them sit in their shady little room and talk shit and lord over everyone's sex lives like the Fates, only instead of doing anything useful they ask you why you haven't slept with Chris yet.

"They know I'm not," Yuuri says frankly, because it's true—he's defended himself on this front many times and at this point they're all just antagonising him because they think it's funny. "They're just hazing you."

"Ohhh," Victor says quietly. His eyes are wide and glassy with realization. "I like being hazed."

Yuuri wrinkles his nose and shoots Victor a speculative glance. _What_ in God's good name that is supposed to mean he has no idea––sometimes Victor says things like this and he doesn't seem to understand that they're bizarre and vaguely worrying—but for both their sakes he pulls Victor in a little closer and lets it pass from his mind as Victor finally closes his eyes and goes to drowse with his face burrowed in Yuuri's chest.

Quietly Yuuri observes him, and tries his best not to breathe too fast or move too much or card his fingers through Victor's hair. Earlier he'd promised: Victor would get to pilot _Lutetia_ once Yuuri was certain he'd recovered. He's dragged out the grace period for as long as he can reasonably justify, and when Victor wakes up and starts prowling the cockpit again Yuuri will have no choice but to let him loose.

What exactly it is he's delaying, he can't say for certain, but he believes he sleeps better like this; close enough to Victor that he can make out the song of him.

(He likes listening to people's inner machinery, all that acid gushing and bubbling just beneath the skin, fascia shifting like tectonic plates––he's got this preoccupation with it all. Otabek is surely right about this one aspect of Yuuri: in a past life he must have died in an operating theatre.)

If he were feeling benevolent, he could say that Victor sleeps better like this too, so thickly insulated from the rest of the world that his vanity deserts him. All that's left of Victor when he's asleep is the rosy glow of his skin, the heat of his cerebellum generating a dream. He doesn't seem so diabolical. He seems like someone Yuuri could get homesick for, one day. 

 

*

 

Back on _Cupid_ Yuuri imagines that things are running smoothly without him and Victor. Yang's settling in nicely in Chris's quarters, Phichit is nurturing the arboretum back to good health, Chris is managing to get by despite having to live in a standard-issue cabin with the rest of the proles, and Minami—

"Oh my god," Yuuri suddenly blurts. "We are so awful."

Victor looks up from the environmental alterator he's ostensibly trying to break, and asks, wide-eyed, "What did we do?"

"We left Minami alone with Yuri," Yuuri says gravely, and Victor just stares at him for a moment, perplexed, before clicking his tongue and wandering off to look at other horrible, filthy, semi-legal gardening contraptions. So far Yuuri hates New Vegas. He should have made Phichit do this. He should have made Phichit do this _with Plisetsky_ so that Minami would be protected from his weird, tantalizing Russian advances. That would've made so much more sense. Yuuri keeps making the mistake of thinking he wants to run away with Victor when really what he wants to do is steal Victor's dirty laundry and wash it with his favorite detergent so Victor always smells the way Yuuri likes.

"Do you not care about this?" he calls out from across the room. "What if Minami gets _pregnant!_ "

The two of them have been standing in this dingy off-planet pawn shop for twenty minutes and the brooding man at the cashier has been eying them warily the whole time. Yuuri doesn't understand what it is about deep space botany that makes it so illicit; earlier, in what he had thought was a perfectly nice oriental fusion restaurant, Victor had abruptly stood up and slunk into a shady back room and fifteen agonising minutes later, returned with a little pouch of what he claimed was _fertilizer_.

As a child Yuuri watched his mother fertilize her little cabbage patch with nothing but mashed up potato peels her whole life, and that'd seemed to turn out fine, so he doesn't know _what_ Phichit's doing or why any of this is necessary. He's not reaching for the stars here, okay—all he wants is some nice, homegrown peaches. He doesn't know why it has to be like this, and now Minami's all by himself and Yuuri's a despicable low-life and Victor—

—Yuuri's not sure what Victor is doing right now, actually.

He's got his back to Yuuri, which is suspicious, because Victor's been hovering over him ever since they landed, peering curiously over his shoulder and inspecting everything he picks up.

He'll offer insightful commentary like, "Oh, Yuuri, that looks like something you would've worn in college," and then Yuuri will put down the dish towel he's holding and refuse to talk to Victor for thirty minutes because Victor's an abomination and Yuuri doesn't even like him that much.

Victor flinches and drops something (hopefully) inexpensive when Yuuri sneaks up on him and latches his fingers onto Victor's shoulders. Guilt practically rolls off him in waves, so four figures might be the best Yuuri can hope for here.

"I was just looking," is Victor's hasty response, so. That's not foreboding at all.

Yuuri narrows his eyes and looks down at the floor, and there's a dime-sized white band between Victor's shoes. He doesn't know what it is but it doesn't look like it's broken, so he sighs a breath of relief and lets it alone.

Of course, Victor crouches down to pick it up, and then slots it back into a little velvet box with plush red lining, and, oh. Yuuri blinks. He's slightly mortified.

"I can't believe you'd buy an engagement ring from a _pawn shop_ ," Yuuri hisses.

"I wasn't going to––look, I like shiny things, you know that," Victor defends, turning around so he can not-so-gently steer the two of them far, far away from the object of Yuuri's disdain. "Are we done here? God, if I'd known you'd wanted to take us to New Vegas I would've never offered to fly you out."

"You could've saved us both if you'd actually helped me with planning," Yuuri tells him as they're leaving; Victor is carrying their bags because he's been decidedly insolent all day.

"You're right," Victor says, and Yuuri braces himself to be devalued. "You could be sitting in a conference room right now and having the time of your life tightening the screws on someone's fake leg."

"If you're going to be rude I'm going to march back into that pawn shop and buy you the world's ugliest engagement ring," Yuuri threatens, "and then I'm going to propose to you with it—"

"—Don't you _dare_ —"

"—standing on _two feet_ —"

"—Yuuri!" Victor finally wails, loud enough that Yuuri is tempted to hide in his coat because he doesn't want to be associated with this man. Only they're in the tragic backwaters of some dismal composite system, so there's hardly anyone around who's prudish enough to side-eye them for raucous behavior.

"You're so mean to me," Victor mumbles, his mouth in a sulky moue. "You know we're alone. Nobody is around to see how much you love me."

"Oh?" Yuuri wraps himself around Victor's arm and leans into him. "You think I love you?"

Victor tilts Yuuri's head up briefly and thumbs at his lower lip, but he sounds cutting when he says, "It's so obvious I'm embarrassed for you."

 

*

 

At times like this Victor is something of an oracle. He knows longing as he does solstices and equinoxes. Strawberries are in season when Victor Nikiforov says they are. He is never wrong also, about the axes and orientations of every star and moon he happens upon. His proficiency in space and time, his natural instinct for speed and distance, is probably what led him to piloting.

It is widely considered remarkable then, that his first attempt at an affair with Yuuri Katsuki failed, on account of him simply being the right person at the wrong time.

 

*

 

432894.27 — _six years ago_

There's a sticky-floored movie theatre just a ten minute drive from campus, where spaced-out kids like to hold hands and spill this God awful cherry lemonade all over the seats, and late one night after all the flicks have ended, Yuuri finds himself sitting in the back row with Victor's head in his lap, Victor all sprawled out across several seats, teetering on the edge of sleep but just barely halted by the stunning cold. There are glitzy little tears at the corners of Victor's eyes because he keeps yawning, and Yuuri keeps brushing them away, secretly fascinated by the way Victor cries.

He remembers a time when Victor used to get emotionally charged handjobs out of his weird Barbie tears. Now when Victor starts crying Yuuri just stares at him from across the room and lifts his eyebrows. It's terrible. It's terrible and mean and selfish, Victor tells him. Frankly Yuuri should just give up on this whole bioengineering thing and go into mortuary science so he can be around other people who are dead inside like him. Victor says all this and then buries his pretty face in Yuuri's shirt and gets golden mascara all over it.

"I should be outsourcing my boyfriends," Victor says, once Yuuri has cajoled him out of his lap, outside the theatre and into the driver's seat of his car. "All you space corps boys are frigid."

Yuuri hums a careless note. The world outside is dark and empty, but the quiet is nothing new. He's seen these sunflower fields a million times by now. And the fact that the road seems to go on forever is just another comforting reminder of how much greater the world is than just the two of them. How the chances of them meeting are infinitesimal, a decimal point for every star in the sky.

It makes sense that he's got his eye on the boy next to him instead of the rest of the world, passing them by in a hot blur. He has a terrible yen for the shape of Victor's body in the driver's seat.

"Victor," he says, because he wants to kiss, " _pull over_ ," because he wants so badly, in that quiet, breathless way of his. Even just sitting there, Victor gets him so hot under the collar that someone could rip Yuuri's heart out of his chest and find it had carbonised.

So Victor pulls over into a wintry little clearing by a pond—because he's not so wound up that he'll trample a hundred sunflowers just to get handsy—and in the few extra moments that Victor keeps driving Yuuri thinks he's been denied.

But then Victor leans back and kills the engine and breathes, "What do you want?" and not "What is it?"

Victor's already closed his eyes and tilted his jaw by the time Yuuri leans over the gearstick.

There's a shared look, and their minds are cloudy enough for a lightning spark of understanding to zap between them. Yuuri clambers into the backseat and Victor follows, practically falls into his lap like a magnet unwilling to part.

He wants to pretend they're on lovers lane, and not some snowy clearing in a forest; that in five minutes Victor's stupid leather jacket will be on the floor, that in ten he'll have his hands under Victor's tank top, that the windows will fog up with the heat of it all and the car will rock 'til it gets harder and harder to breathe.

When Victor's this close he's a force to be reckoned with. Yuuri's been saddled with a seraph. Just a mixture of all these unbearable temperatures, running together like he's got a high fever.

"I'll show you frigid," Yuuri grumbles into Victor's neck, mouthing at the skin around his necklace, and Victor laughs like it's been shocked out of him.

He's hopeless. He's so sweet. There's so much Yuuri wants to do to him.

Victor smells like his sunscreen even though it's past midnight, and his jeans are wickedly tight and the bane of Yuuri's existence, and there's glitter in his hair because when is there _not_. There's glitter all over him; chances are it's all over Yuuri's hands and at the corner of his mouth. Victor's probably the easiest person in the world to track because he leaves a sparkly trail behind him wherever he goes.

Maybe it's because Yuuri's scowling or he's biting too much, or because his fingers are too tight in Victor's hair—but it's like all of a sudden those lightning clouds part, and Victor leans back and holds Yuuri in place by his shoulders.

Victor has a radioactive touch. Yuuri can feel the skin tingling beneath his fingers, like all of a sudden Victor's having an allergic reaction.

"You like me, don't you?" Victor asks. The catch is that he doesn't sound like he's teasing. He looks earnest. Yuuri narrows his eyes at him, and then wipes his mouth. The answer is obvious. His hand is still tucked against the bow of Victor's hip, but it's burning now.

"I—yeah," Yuuri says. His tongue darts out to wet his lips. "You couldn't…tell?"

The moonlight streams through the window and slants across half of Victor's face. Somewhere in his expression Yuuri thinks he can find trepidation. "After all, we're married," he adds, when Victor still says nothing, still has that searching look on his face. At least he gets a flicker of a smile out of that. It lifts Victor's eyes at the corners, even if it's so, so briefly.

"Tell me…" Victor moves one hand and curls it around Yuuri's wrist, like a defective vice. "Tell me I'm all you can think about."

Outside it's raining. Inside Yuuri is warm, an overactive generator. He doesn't understand, really, but lavishing Victor is at least something he can do.

Yuuri's smile is weak. "How can anyone focus when you walk into the room?" He lowers his voice, and tells Victor honestly, "I'm going to fail my biomechanics final because of you."

"Tell me you'd run away with me," Victor says. Their foreheads are pressed together again, the two of them murmuring in conspiracy. "You'd follow me."

"Of course," Yuuri promises. "Wherever you want. I'd go with you."

"Mmm." Victor cups the back of Yuuri's neck, warming up to him, bit by bit. "That's very irresponsible of you."

"I can't help it," Yuuri mumbles, eyes hooded. He just wants this kiss. Ever since he's gotten a taste it's all he can think about, that sickly sweet tang in his mouth of cheap cherry flavoring, and all the golden glitter it leaves smeared around his lips. As if life wasn't hard enough.

"It's my fault," Victor murmurs. "I should take responsibility." He turns his cheek and tuts softly when Yuuri leans in to pluck a kiss from him. At the noise of hurt Yuuri makes, Victor guides his hands to the low curve of his back and lets them rest there, warm and dry and soft.

It's when Victor finally says, "I want to take you with me," that Yuuri starts broadcasting real distress.

"What," he says bluntly. His hands are sweating—Victor must be able to feel it, there on the hot skin beneath his top, because there's a flash of _something_ that flits across his face before Yuuri can rightly gauge it, and then he's pushing forward and his mouth is open and pleading, not gentle enough to leave room for any questions.

This kiss is oddly gooey. Victor is particular about the consistency of what he puts on his mouth. But his mouth gets wet when he's crying, or when he's about to vomit—a thought which inspires no small amount of dread in Yuuri. Admittedly it's insensitive. Yuuri is just that, though. Indelicate. Inconsiderate.

"Stop." This time it's Yuuri who rests a hand on Victor's chest and pushes him away. He screws up his face. "What are you…why would you say something like that?"

Victor peers down at him, looking apprehensive, Yuuri thinks, or maybe queasy.

Yuuri manages, despite his awful self, to take his hands off those cute back dimples. And he places his hands on the cool leather of the carseat, a good five inches from Victor's spread-out knees. There's an almost imperceptible tremor in Victor's hands. Yuuri can't see it at first, just feels it against the nape of his neck where Victor is toying idly with his peach fuzz until it becomes too obvious, before Victor pulls back and folds his arms around himself in a protective cocoon. That's when Yuuri can see it; this non-stop shiver in him.

He wants to take Victor's fingertips and kiss them one by one where they meet his palm, make his mouth a shock absorber, ply Victor into slow breaths and steady beats of the heart.

He refrains; Victor's knuckles are white and his fingers locked firmly around his elbows. His whole body screams ' _closed now; come back later_.'

"I'd follow you to the end of the earth," Yuuri makes the mistake of saying. Victor curls in on himself that little bit more, looks out through the window and hugs himself tighter.

In this day and age, the end of the earth is just a night train away.

"I want you to," Victor sighs. He shuffles out of Yuuri's lap and instead sits next to him. "…The Vizcaya institute sent me a letter."

Yuuri snaps his head to look at him. "Oh." He still doesn't quite understand. "So. After you graduate training." In which case they'll still have years together. At least two, probably more because of Victor's specialization, but then again he's so incredible, it's no wonder he got scouted this young, Victor's even got a few inches to grow still—

"They want me to fast track my specialization with them." Victor stares down at his hands folded in his lap. "I should be headed up in…a month or so."

Yuuri's heart stops—he stumbles out the car door and into the storm outside—and then takes off again.

"Where are you going?" Victor snaps. "Yuuri!"

The rain is colder than Yuuri thought it would be. He has to raise his voice to be heard over the rain. "I need to clear my head!"

"Clear your head in the _car!_ "

He feels dizzy; his heart is stuttering out of rhythm, and the blood in his head is boiling. Already there's adrenaline flooding him, surging through his arteries, brought to life by the flashes of lightning up above. Yuuri's going to take flight over fight like he always has, and Victor—he's never run from anything before. He's never had to.

Victor shouts, " _Really?_ " He's seething. "Really, you're going to walk?"

"I want to walk," Yuuri says.

The door slams closed once Yuuri's turned around. Victor's climbed back into the driver's seat, and now he's driving alongside Yuuri at a snail's pace with the window rolled down, quietly smoldering. "Yuuri, get in the fucking car."

The thing about this town is that there's only one road, really, that you can drive on. There are dirt paths. There are a lot of sunflowers that you'll kill if you try to drive on those dirt paths. Some of the rain has frozen on the ground, and it shatters into glitter when Yuuri steps in it.

"Put your seatbelt on," Yuuri tells him calmly.

"I'm not going anywhere until you get back in here."

There's still this rush flowing through him, almost entirely chemical, telling him to make a break for it, to get out while he still can. Though his hopes aren't high, Yuuri can still make out a splash of stars through the rainclouds overhead, and he knows a shelter not too far down the road he's headed for.

"You'll get pneumonia out here," Victor says, almost pleading now.

Yuuri will get an hour or two of salvation. Maybe a cold. And then he will come back home and depending on his luck, Victor may or may not still be there.

"Go home, Victor."

 

*

 

There's a moment where Victor looks awfully torn, Yuuri heading in the direction opposite of home, and then his expression steels. The impala swivels back onto the highway and peels off. It's not long before all Yuuri can make out is a couple of glowing red eyes, tail lights shrinking to pinpricks in the distance.

 

*

 

It's a stretch of a dozen miles or so between the diner and their campus, and Yuuri walks a fifth of that dark belt, too stuck in his own silent turmoil to pay much attention to the storm.

On either side of the road you get this clotted mass of sunflowers, each one towering about ten foot on average, solid and dense and above all, prosperous. It has the look and feel of decolonisation.

In the black of the night with not a single splash of light to bounce off their petals, they are well and truly terrifying. Yuuri's never realized. He walks right on the very edge of the highway, tries to avoid stumbling into their domain.

The adrenaline is long gone now. Its synthesis leaves Yuuri nauseous and reeling. The feeling fades only when he hears the wet crunch of gravel beneath his feet—when looks up and can make out, finally, the diner and its flickering neon glow, a blast of technicolor light against an empty horizon.

One of the waitresses is leaning against the building, standing just an inch out of the rain and smoking, her apron filthy but the yellow of her skirt gleaming as ever. It's one in the morning and she doesn't look surprised to see him. She's surprised that Victor isn't there with him. He thinks she tries to peer around his head as if expecting Victor's impala to come guzzling through the curtain of sunflowers behind him.

"Where's your guy?" she asks, once she's settled him down with a spanish omelette and a vanilla milkshake. She pushes a napkin dispenser towards him. He's not crying, but he's dripped rainwater all over the floor. He thinks the single, lonely sunflower petal on the floor is there because of him too.

"Sorry about the mess," he says, and it comes out muffled through the napkin on his face.

"Yeah, me too."

Maybe she's joking. The diner is well-lit and warm and clean. It's also empty, but that's probably to be expected at this time of night, in this little town. She leans over from where she's sitting across him in the booth and takes another sunflower petal out of his hair, pushing her lips out against a smile while he stuffs his mouth with wholesome chunks of egg and tomatoes, artfully avoiding her eye.

Usually they don't do this. The waitresses aren't as sweet on Yuuri as they are Victor. (Because everyone is sweet on Victor, because he's radiant, and because you can hear chimes tinkling when he comes through the door even if there aren't any hung up.)

In the kitchen a girl calls out, "Why are you bothering those boys!" and Jennifer—that's what this girl's name tag tells him—shouts back, "It's just the one, Cindy!"

"Just one?" Cindy comes to the counter to make a moue at the two of them. "I sent out too much then. You know he gets carsick."

"I'm helping him." Jennifer steals a fry off his plate and wags it at her. Yuuri didn't order fries. Actually he didn't order anything. When he came in Jennifer scrubbed his head with a rag so he wouldn't drip on the pleather, and the food was just there. "Anyway, he didn't come in a car." She looks over at him. "Did you. You walked."

"Oh noooo," Cindy wails. "Look at his face! Did Victor _die_? Is he okay?"

"No, no, he's okay," Yuuri assures her, glancing back at Jennifer with a helpless look on his face. Victor Nikiforov is not dead. He's just going to go away, off to somewhere very far, and not come back. There's a difference. When he was five years old his goldfish did the same thing. "He's…he's fine. He went home without me."

"Without you?" Cindy scrunches up her face. "I'll call him. I can't believe he'd leave you alone in this weather."

Jennifer says, "We'll drive you home." She kicks Yuuri under the table, maybe for no reason at all except to push him into eating more.

"You can do better than him," she tells him, a little while later, staring out the window with her chin on her manicured hands.

"I really can't," he mumbles, while his mouth is still full. His neck burns at the sight of his reflection in the mirror.

She pauses. Gives him a thoughtful look. "Yeah. I know."

 

*

 

871475.98 — _present day_

Back at the hotel Yuuri tries to take a nap while Victor gets drunk on complimentary wine, citing his excuse as, "Because you've been _antagonising_ me all day, and I'm sick and tired—anyway I'm sure there's antioxidants in it or something."

Naturally when he wakes up Victor is sprawled out half-undressed on the couch, rather listlessly watching a home decorating channel.

Their hotel room is nice: they have a queen-sized bed, and there's a classy potted plant somewhere around here. The mood is set off a bit by one very indolent Victor Nikiforov in the middle of the room, so Yuuri sets about tidying him up and making him look presentable.

"Good evening," Yuuri says, wandering over and leaning over the back of the couch.

Victor peers up at him with something like amusement. Or affection. Yuuri would like it if it really were affection, but it could just be a gun in his pocket. Victor's a messy drunk, which is why his hair is tousled and his jeans are halfway down his legs and there is chocolate melting on the coffee table. "Well hello there," Victor says, and he hooks his finger in the collar of Yuuri's shirt and gives it a coaxing tug. Yuuri bats his hand away and circles around to sit on the edge of the couch.

Victor waves at him, eyes hooded and shirt rucked up, and then purrs, "Come closer."

Yuuri likes this Victor more than he'd liked the earlier one. This one is coyly running his finger up and down the arch of Yuuri's wrist. There are glossy beads of sweat in his hairline, lining his cupid's bow and the dip of his collarbone. 'Thoroughly debauched' suits him so well; his face flushes such a sinful shade of pink when he's been drinking. No wonder he's affronted when Yuuri leans closer, only to shuck up his pants and zip up his fly for him.

"What are you—stop that." Victor frowns when Yuuri hunkers down to do up his buttons. "I didn't ask for this," he fusses, squirming even though Yuuri's really already done—a couple of buttons undone at the neck is standard for him anyway. Victor likes to show off his beautiful swan neck. Yuuri uses him as a periscope to look at things on top shelves in department stores.

"How much did you drink?" Yuuri chides, pinning Victor's hair out of his face. "I wanted to take you grocery shopping."

"Oh, don't go," Victor protests, frowning. He hooks one arm around Yuuri's neck and drags him down until they're pressed together. He smells like baked sugar. Maybe because he insisted on buying a dozen hot malasadas on their way back to the hotel.

"I still want you to come," Yuuri says. "You can sit in the cart."

"What if we stay here and never leave and never, ever go grocery shopping," Victor suggests. He fits his hands on Yuuri's hips, probably because his idea is so bad he needs additional insurance to make sure Yuuri doesn't just spit on him and scamper off. Yuuri should really spit on him and scamper off. Instead he drops his head against Victor's chest and sounds out his heartbeat and lets Victor keep his hands right where they're not supposed to be.

"I don't really like it here," Yuuri murmurs. This is not about grocery shopping anymore. "I want you to take me home."

 

*

 

It's funny. Part of Yuuri's job is knowing what a resting heartbeat sounds like.

Here is a secret: it does not sound like _that_.

 

*

 

Yuuri was lying when he said Victor could sit in their shopping cart. He thinks if Victor ever tried to pull that off he'd inevitably have to escort himself from the premises and never show his face in that store ever again.

So instead Yuuri picks up a basket and Victor attaches himself to Yuuri like he's gone and got himself imprinted on him. The two of them move around like they're in a three-legged race, Yuuri shuffling steadily forward while Victor winds his arms around Yuuri's shoulders and drags after him like a used parachute. Victor is still kind of drunk, but it's okay because they are standing in an almost-empty combini at two in the morning. This is New Vegas, and there are no standards here. Only potholes. Also some street food stalls outside, billowing sweet-smelling smoke out into the road. It's not all bad! Nothing ever is.

Victor blew the only employee they've encountered so far a very lush kiss and he didn't get jumped immediately—so they're good, presumably.

On the other hand everywhere they go they seem to accrue an excess of dirty looks. Not that they don't deserve it. Victor is misbehaving, as he likes to do.

"Why are you wearing this?" Victor plucks at his shirt. "Baby. Yuuuuri _._ You can do better than this."

"We are in public," Yuuri reminds him. Again. The shirt he's wearing is fine—for some reason he doesn't like people seeing his shoulders? It seems so intimate. Obviously Victor disapproves. "Can we get some bread in you? Try to look more sober."

"I'm sober," Victor insists.

If, somehow, Victor manages to get them thrown out of a forty-three-seven convenience store, whilst _sober_ —then Yuuri will never live it down and he will never to talk to Victor again. The two of them won't even return to _Cupid_. Yuuri will personally see to it that they are both exiled from all civilization forever so that nobody ever has to deal with the two of them again.

"Get your hands off my belt," Yuuri says flatly, and then, "go find us some condensed milk."

Victor makes a contrary _yuck_ noise, but Yuuri gives him a scathing enough look that he at least follows up with, "…How much do you want?"

That at least gets Victor off his back for a few minutes so Yuuri can stand in the probiotics aisle of the grocery store and mull over the sugars content of various dessert drinks in peace. Possibly Victor is going to get lost and Yuuri will end up being forced to humiliate him over the PA system before single mothers can scope him out and steal him for their nests. Victor is to young mothers what sweetclover is to bees. Who knows why. Do they want to spoonfeed him okayu? Do they want to rip his shirt open and ravish him? Yuuri doesn't know. He doesn't care. He has reserved all these rights and more.

Victor does get lost, but somehow he gets lost in the fruit aisle, so maybe he forgot that he came here with Yuuri and decided he wanted to hold some alien citruses instead of returning to his poor nurse.

When Yuuri finds him he doesn't appear to have any condensed milk on his person, but he does have a pack of baby wipes tucked under his arm and he is absently passing a kumquat back and forth in his hands. His shirt is rucked up again. Somehow his hair is more tousled. Yuuri feels like Victor's just been getting progressively more intoxicated despite the fact that he supposedly hasn't had anything to drink since they left the hotel, because one way or another he keeps defaulting back to this disheveled state.

He corrals Victor back into his personal space and forgets about the milk.

"Let's get you back," Yuuri murmurs, and now he's the one carrying the bags, because all Victor seems to want to do is bite on the gauzy flesh of weird space citruses, put his hand in Yuuri's and swing their arms together while they wade through traffic, congested and humming like a swarm of cicadas. He is, for all intents and purposes, dream walking. Yuuri's seen him heady before but it's like he's in a trance state; he's somewhere else entirely, staring off into the middle distance, an off-putting shade of silent.

He thinks at some point Victor tries to explain what's on his mind while they're walking back to the hotel. There's a fleeting moment during which he falters in his step, and when Yuuri stops and looks back at him, his mouth is slightly parted.

Yuuri wants to find a lamp post, stand beneath its golden glow and put his hands on Victor's shoulders and shake him until the fine shape of him comes back into focus—but there are no such things for miles. New Vegas would be entirely dark if not for the flickering glow of old televisions pouring out of doors left slightly ajar, these little _come home_ 's for loved ones out late at night.

New Vegas makes you feel like a stranger in the way most cities do. The air is a thick blend of exhaust and sea salt. Rumor has it there's an ocean here somewhere, plated over with concrete. Here nature knocks on whatever open door it can find. You smell it before you see it—the cloying odor of sticky, oily flowers layered over the smell of rain over hot concrete. There are weeds and dandelions clawing through the cracks in the pavement; creepers in the webbed gunshot cracks of old stately buildings; a stray kitten sleeping in a wheel well to stay warm.

It feels like if you kick hard enough you might break your way through all that dusty cement and drop straight down into a frigid, pulsing sea.

It's…something.

Victor is quiet on their way back. Yuuri's surely following him, because he doesn't know where he is, can't see far enough to read any street signs, and yet Victor's not half a step ahead of him. The two of them move of something else's accord. Somehow they don't get lost.

 

*

 

It comes out of nowhere, really.

"Do you know when we met for the first time," Victor starts, then amends, "well, not the first time, but. You know."

They are in bed. They are fully clothed. Victor is sprawled out on top of him, his head resting in the soft space next to Yuuri's neck. The lights are low and Yuuri feels like he's getting drunk off proximity alone.

"I didn't understand," Victor says softly, "why you seemed so…angry."

Which is an odd thing to say, Yuuri thinks. Victor seems to have a different recollection of their second-first meeting. He had not been happy to see Yuuri. There had been a stifling degree of awkwardness. Yuuri had thought it was just that: plain dislike. Because supposedly, they'd outgrown each other.

"You didn't recognise me." It comes out barely audible and humiliated. Yuuri doesn't know why they're having this conversation now. In truth he's been trying to forget everything that transpired between them so many years ago. The two of them have painted over it with something gentler—something that fits into the crevices of 'here' and 'now.'

"I wasn't sure about you," Victor admits. He curls his fingers around Yuuri's arm. He seems to be trying to make himself very small. "I thought if it was really you, then…surely you'd be happy to see me?"

Yuuri digs his fingers into the bedsheets. _Oh._

"But it was like…" Victor frowns. He huffs through his nose, a little frustrated. His voice cracks almost imperceptibly when he says, "You hated everything about me."

That sends a jolt of pain through Yuuri. The grip on his arm tightens so that he can briefly feel nails digging in, and then suddenly it goes slack.

Belatedly he realizes—there is, within that oddly shaped empty space within him, a great deal of wanting. His mouth is full of humid air and no explanations and a lot of bad pet names. It's so dark in their hotel room that he can barely see, and though the look on Victor's face must be precious right now, all he can make out is the wet, bright glint of Victor's eye.

He sits up against the headboard and Victor doesn't move to join him, instead he just stays lying where he is, with his eyes downcast and his hands empty and limp. Maybe he thinks Yuuri is running away from this—that the game they play is not a game at all. That Yuuri pulls on his pigtails all the time because he actually dislikes Victor and not because he's wretchedly lost on him. He looks awfully deflated by the thought.

The look on his face is priceless, though, when Yuuri peers down at him. So forlorn. Victor's so odd, honestly.

Yuuri sighs, and tips his head back so it rests against the headboard. "I didn't know what to do with myself in front of you," he says. "You kind of…crashed and burned into my life."

 _Like getting hit by an asteroid_ , he thinks blandly, before taking Victor's hand and curling it in his own.

"Even just being around you," Yuuri says. "I was so embarrassed."

"I wanted to be friends!" wails Victor. Yuuri clucks and pulls Victor up into the vee of his legs so he can rest his head against his thigh. "You wanted to stab me many times with needles."

"Well." Yuuri concedes. "I. Yes."

Victor growls a little to himself and shuts up when Yuuri starts playing with his hair, tracing words against his scalp. "But look at us now," Yuuri says. "Friends." Who sleep in beds together and threaten to propose from time to time. "Amazing."

Victor says drily, "Such good friends."

"So," says Yuuri lightly, "you have everything you want. No reason to complain."

"I," Victor starts. He closes his mouth. Unfortunately he opens it again. "Yuuri, shut up."

 

*

 

All in all they manage to obtain most of Phichit's wanted paraphernalia in their day and a half at New Vegas, and then it's another two-day flight back to _Cupid's_ coordinates, during which Victor manages to not go into another coma, but _does_ come down with something despite the two of them living in the sterilized confines of an isolated starship.

"How," Yuuri hisses, wiping Victor's forehead down with a damp towelette, " _how_ could you possibly get sick? It's just the two of us. In a _box_."

"I can't do this anymore," Victor wheezes. His cheeks are flushed with fever and his voice sounds like someone scrubbed his throat with a cheese grater. Yuuri is making him pilot anyway. "I'm dying."

"You've already played that card," Yuuri tells him firmly. "How many vacation days do you think I have, really."

"I'm dying and I need to know you love me!"

Yuuri pauses in his tender wiping of Victor's gooey, sweaty face and glares down at him. "You seemed pretty sure of it before."

In that moment _Lutetia_ narrowly avoids exploding against a comet that Victor almost doesn't clear as it soars past them, leaving a blazing trail of indigo in its wake. Yuuri's stomach swoops with the sudden momentum; he tightens his grip on the back of Victor's chair.

Victor groans and tips his head back to stare at the ceiling.

"Fuck me," Victor mutters under his breath. Proud of his beau for not killing them, Yuuri pats Victor's cheek and goes to find some talcum powder. So far he's found nothing in the cargo storage unit but clove oil, a tube of aloe vera gel, and one of those tiny, horrifically potent bottles of chinese green oil.

While rummaging through various half-emptied medkits in the cargo storage unit, Yuuri calls out, "Where does it hurt!"

"In my heart!" Victor yells. "With all my feelings!"

"What about toothache?" Yuuri asks. "I can fix toothache."

"How are you a certified medical officer?" Victor snaps. "I don't take you to Namaka when you want to go to Petit-Prince. I'm filing a report against you."

"Your medical file says you're allergic to most of the painkillers I keep packed," Yuuri says, and returns to find Victor keeled over the console, making wounded animal noises. Clucking, he sits himself down on the broad arm of Victor's chair and readjusts the pillow he's tucked behind Victor's waist, then pulls Victor back upright by his collar and dabs dry, consoling kisses against his sweat-glossy neck until Victor sighs and leans back, his shoulders relaxing.

"Stop if you really think this isn't safe," Yuuri says, rubbing his shoulder. "Don't you miss Makkachin?"

Victor makes a strangled, whining noise. He leans his head on Yuuri's proffered shoulder. "Don't remind me."

"Let's make this quick and painless, then. I'm going to go heat up some pandesal and then I'll dry shampoo your hair for you."

"Because you love me?"

"Hah." Yuuri hops off the chair and saunters back out of the cockpit. He sings out, "Something like that!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ["Because loving is wanting and being able to eat up and yet to stop at the boundary. And there, at the tiniest beat between springing and stopping, in rushes fear. The spring is already in mid-air. The heart stops. The heart takes off again."](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=F89-AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA78&lpg=PA78&dq=%22The+spring+is+already+in+mid-air.+The+heart+stops.+The+heart+takes+off+again.%22&source=bl&ots=W8Ciy9MZmS&sig=qqlqdYVN8WlP3jps6tm6Hq7_ouw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjB0MXHkMXUAhXDI8AKHabNB_MQ6AEILTAB#v=onepage&q=%22The%20spring%20is%20already%20in%20mid-air.%20The%20heart%20stops.%20The%20heart%20takes%20off%20again.%22&f=false) — Hélène Cixous, “The Love of the Wolf”
> 
> ["The first thing I noticed in Havana was that the city was dark at night. There were no streetlights, porch lights or living-room lamps. It was pitch black except for the faint colorful glow spilling out of open doors everywhere, and it came from the TVs. The light captivated me."](http://www.loeildelaphotographie.com/en/2011/06/27/article/12992/cuba-by-simone-lueck-and-jeffrey-milstein/) — Simone Lueck and Jeffrey Milstein, “Cuba”


	10. Chapter 10

Yuuri spends most of their ride back to _Cupid_ fussing over Victor and trying to defend him from the nasty virus that's currently having its way with him. Victor's lips crack and Yuuri paints lip salve over them; Victor's forehead is slimy with sweat and Yuuri dabs at it with a cool, wet towel; Victor has a headache that brings him to the verge of tears, which somehow manages to re-sensitize Yuuri into curling around him and hushing him to sleep. Just for a little while, until the pain goes away.

"I want you in a care ward once we get back," says Yuuri, in the last few hours of their voyage.

Victor tells him, "Little Yuri will take care of me like always," which is an endearing mental image, even if Yuuri has a hard time picturing it.

He huffs. "I'll still check in on you," he says. "Maybe I'll even bring you something nice."

What's distressing is Victor has nothing lewd or kittenish to say to that. He yawns. He makes a clopping noise afterwards with his mouth that sounds like a horse trotting on cobblestone. What's even more upsetting is Yuuri doesn't wrinkle his nose and make a point of looking offended, but rather just stands there, regarding Victor, noiselessly brewing with an amused sort of affection—coming to an understanding.

 

*

 

It's late at night on the ship when they finally make it back to _Cupid_. The hangar is as dark and as quiet as always, although this time when Yuuri steps off _Lutetia_ , he spies movement in the corner of his eye—which just turns out to be a lonely maintenance droid, snuffling around the landing deck for no obvious reason.

The poor thing must pick up on all the nasty pathogens that Victor is teeming with, because it promptly runs up on Victor and starts vacuuming his leg in its distress. The thing is shaped like a toaster, and only marginally more advanced than one; Chris obviously had a surplus in the budget and found the least productive way to get rid of it.

Victor looks down at it in earnest confusion, then looks back at Yuuri with a teary, cherubic sort of helplessness. Yuuri kicks the droid into outer space and gives it a few days before it manages to gravitate back to _Cupid_ and start haunting him; he's spent the last two days coddling Victor beyond reason so now he's all out of clemency. Victor seems somewhat startled, but he reverts back to being wretched soon enough. He buries his fever-hot face into Yuuri's hair, because apparently he can do whatever he wants since he's sick and also taller than Yuuri.

Yuuri reaches awkwardly behind himself to pat the side of his face to comfort him. "You're sure you don't want to spend the night in the medbay?"

He wouldn't mind having Victor officially under his care for a while. It would be nice, he thinks, to have every excuse to adorn Victor's bedside with flowers, and to coolly ask him intrusive questions and watch him squirm.

"I don't like hospitals," Victor mumbles, and that's that.

They don't hold hands on their way back to their respective rooms, but Victor walks very close to him. By nature Yuuri always tries to be inoffensive. Even in dim, empty corridors, the reflex to conceal any affection is hard to shake. This is just something ingrained in him now, since his home is essentially a pod within his workplace.

Outside Victor's door, Yuuri appraises him one last time, and says warily, "You're not going to do anything stupid, are you."

"You know how I get when you leave me alone," Victor teases. His back is pressed up against the cool steel of his door. He says frankly, "Actually, I suppose you'd be the last to know."

Yuuri _hmmphs_ , then nestles his head alongside Victor's chest, standing largely concealed in the darkness.

"Get better soon," he mumbles, and in this case it's not a suggestion so much as it is a demand.

"I wouldn't dream of anything else," Victor whispers. "Sweet dreams, strawberry!"

And with that he slips into his bunk, leaving Yuuri stood awkwardly, and swirling with all his conflicting feelings on being called a strawberry.

 

*

 

Somewhere in all the detritus of daily life, a baby is born, which is particularly more exciting than anything the _Cupid_ crew has seen in years.

"Lilia's very pleased with the child. I think she already considers it a part of her crew," Otabek explains as he's rooting around in someone's mouth for cavities. Yuuri is standing by him and listening intently, wearing one of the pairs of medical gloves that Victor gave him a few weeks back; they're patterned with tulips and very cute, but Yuuri can't help but feel bad that he has to throw each pair away once they've been ruined with blood and plasma. Otabek continues, "Later you and I will be in talks about monitoring the child."

" _I_ will monitor the child," Larissa chimes in. With every passing day she is less of an A.I. counsellor and more of an eldritch horror who lives in the walls. She declares, proudly, "I am more fit than any crew member on this ship to do so."

Yuuri wrinkles his nose. "You don't even have arms."

"Officer Altin, terminate him."

"Larissa, talk to Isabella about this," Otabek says, making vague shooing gestures. "Leave my first officer alone."

Later, once Yuuri has finished preening over being Otabek's favorite, he will silently admit that Larissa would make a surprisingly apt baby monitor. Even though she's an eldritch horror, she's an eldritch horror who has eyes in enough places that she can continuously watch over a small, lovely thing as it wanders around her vast and cold domain.

But right now Larissa is just a mean, useless robot, and right now Yuuri can see Victor loitering in the medbay waiting room when he's supposed to be in bed, all frail and helpless-like. He's bothering the receptionists. He should not be bothering the receptionists.

"You're supposed to be resting," he scolds, once Victor spots him marching across the room. Victor looks even worse than he did last night, looking wrung out and weary, and he's still dressed in his night clothes. All of Yuuri's efforts to be a good and noble doctor are squandered on a man who lives to defy his own body.

"I get lonely." Victor makes a moue. The receptionists give Yuuri a _look_ , as if you'd have to be a savage to leave a grown man alone to fend for himself at the hands of a cold. "And little Yuri didn't want me around."

Yuuri clucks, and gently pulls him along into one of the empty consultation rooms as he's grumbling, "He shouldn't be exposed to whatever you have anyway."

"I don't want to make you sick either," Victor mumbles, a little abashed.

Yuuri closes the door behind them and sits Victor down on the examination bench. "I was all over you while you were ill in Vegas." It's unprofessional of him, but it's in the interest of upper management to bolster his immune system in any way they can. A doctor out of commission is budget wasted, so Otabek has them all on supplement regimes, in his mercifully ruthless sort of way. "I won't get sick now. Unless you kiss me, maybe? I doubt it."

Victor lights up. "You kissed me!"

Yuuri scowls. "But not on the _mouth_ ," he says. "You're my patient now, so we shouldn't talk about this."

"I'm not your patient at all," Victor argues. "You just…dragged me into this room," he says, glancing around as if it's only just occurred to him that they're not still standing by reception.

Yuuri ignores him, as he's wont to do. "How are you feeling, Mister Nikiforov?" He steps closer, tips up Victor's chin with the tip of his finger. Scratch that: he leans in and cups Victor's disarmingly supple face in his cold, gloved hands, like cradling an overripe plum. "Still lonely?"

Victor nods slightly and quietly, and he shivers when Yuuri draws a finger down the side of his neck in what is possibly the most ineffective diagnostic technique known to man.

"So," Victor starts, wide-eyed, "what is it you do in here? You know my work by now."

"I really don't," Yuuri says flatly. But he's also heard through word of mouth that you can order supplies through the ship commissary, so maybe Victor is running a secret, underground delivery service. Except he just delivers like, incense sticks and four-ply toilet paper. Chris has to get his from somewhere. Yuuri always steals what's left of his toilet roll every time he somehow ends up alone in Chris's ensuite bathroom. Now that Victor is here and also infatuated with him, he can just get it straight from the source.

Does that mean Victor and Chris talk to each other? Yuuri blanches. He shakes his head of the thought. "Anyway. My work is—" he furrows his brows, looking to settle on a word "—unorthodox. As far as medicine goes."

"But it's still honorable, I'm guessing." Victor pats the empty space next to him. As if Yuuri would be caught dead sitting next to one of his patients on an examination bed.

He turns away and fixes his stare on a dental hygiene poster on the wall. That will be Otabek's doing. None of these posters have any color or holographic sheen.

"I spend a lot of time wondering what people miss the most about a part of them. It's something they never expect to lose." There are nineteen crew members on board who, maybe even before joining _Cupid_ , have lost limbs to the clutches of outer space. Deep space travel warrants this kind of thing, Yuuri guesses.

"Balance?" Victor offers, and it's not a bad guess.

"Of course. That's where we start. Things like coordination—the basic principle is to try and retain the old functionality." Yuuri pauses in his explanation. This is what he chose to specialize in after Victor left to work under the Vizcaya Institute, back when he was left fumbling and it'd become clear engineering wasn't all he wanted to do.

He purses his lips, and looks back at Victor, who doesn't seem entirely uninterested. He's leaning forward, eyes glazed over in wonder, holding his face in his hands. It's very sweet of him. Yuuri can't bring himself to talk about the more gruesome parts of his work—which is essentially kintsugi in its final, most essential form.

"I don't know if this is surprising…" Yuuri murmurs. He steps closer to Victor again. "But most people want their new prosthetics—" he slips two fingers just beneath Victor's shirt and pinches briefly the tub at his waist "—a little bit squishy? And quite warm, too. So we include that."

"Oh," Victor breathes. Yuuri drops his hand. "You can add…upgrades?"

"I guess. We once had a sixteen-year-old who lost an arm, and she'd had all these tattoos on her sleeve," Yuuri explains, "and so we had an artist brought in who could paint them onto the new limb."

He pauses. "I don't really know what the tattoos looked like before, but the artist worked very hard to make something even more beautiful. The girl was worried until she saw it finished, and then afterwards, she was so glad…"

Yuuri trails off. When he was younger he never realized it would be this crucial. To have something vital ripped away without warning; to try desperately to close the wound; to be left with an atom where there was once a star.

And then to transfigure that into something far beyond the dreams of what it once was.

 

*

 

389427.99 — _six years ago_

It's still pouring down when he finally gets back to campus. The girls flash him sorry looks the whole way home, and after Yuuri thanks them for everything, Cindy plants a dry, lipstick kiss on his cold cheek and tells him, "Be nice to each other."

The sky is black and the air has a sharp, fruity tang to it, and Yuuri stands in the lashing rain for a little longer to watch as their van gets swallowed up on the dark horizon.

His glasses are tucked away somewhere, useless in this weather. The world is a blur to him, the outlines of everything softened by the rain. He's soaked right down to his skin, but it's oddly warm out for a winter night, and despite the late hour, heat still radiates off the concrete in the parking lot.

As he makes the trudge back to his dorm, he mulls over the situation, trying not to exacerbate the sickly feeling spreading outwards from his heart.

Victor calls him.

Yuuri stares down at his phone screen long enough that the first call cancels itself, and then he doesn't call again. He can't for the life of him imagine what's in that phone call. The only reason he calls back once he's inside is because he thinks it'll bother him for the rest of his life if he never finds out.

He doesn't even hear any ringing before Victor picks up.

"Yuuri?"

And that's enough to make Yuuri realize—

"Yuuri, where are you?" Victor sounds frustrated. "Do you have a ride? I can hear rain. Are you still in the _rain?_ "

"I just got back," Yuuri says shortly. The glare of bare halogen bulbs overhead is making him dizzy. For some reason it's colder inside the dorm building than it is out in the wind and rain. "I'll see you…I don't know. In class."

"What?" Victor snaps. "How long are you going to ignore me?"

Yuuri almost trips over himself. His heart falters. He feels like earthquakes are surfacing wherever he treads, like if he turned around now he'd see a blistering cracks in the tiles behind him. He comes to a standstill, and glances over his shoulder to find no such thing. The world is quiet and cool. He is standing in a facility built strategically away from any fault lines or seismic activity, and through the reinforced concrete walls, he can just barely make out the muffled song of katydids in discord.

He clamps a hand over his ear to drown out the noise. "I'm not—I don't know, okay?"

"You don't want to see me," Victor says, his voice like a monitor flatlining.

"No."

Yuuri halts.

"Shit," he hisses, staring down at his phone screen. Victor's already hung up on him. He thinks he would've preferred not knowing what was in this call after all.

 

*

 

What is it about Victor, Yuuri wonders these days, that he can walk into any room and when he leaves it'll have his name written all over it.

He gets home, eventually, but when he does it's just more salt in the wound. As he's locking the door behind him he can already see Victor's phone charger on the desk, and his nightshirt on the floor from this morning. Yuuri narrows his eyes. _This morning_. Victor already knew what was happening and somehow he still had it in him to neck shamelessly in the back of a movie theatre for an hour before falling asleep. It's easy to believe that Victor would choose to ignore this until it finally swelled to malignancy.

As he's peeling his sodden hoodie over his head, his phone falls out of his pocket and onto the ground where Yuuri kicks it beneath a drawer to let it die. Yuuri doesn't realize what he's doing until he's filled a laundry basket with both of their clothes, as opposed to setting Victor's aside so he can pick them up. Later. Maybe.

Somehow the bathroom is unimaginably worse, and Yuuri doesn't bother with Victor's things in there because he'll cry, probably, or he'll break them, or he'll be tempted to keep Victor's pineapple-scented dry shampoo as reparations. Victor may be Russian in blood but in his heart there's a boy who belongs in the tropics. There's so many pineapple-scented things in their bathroom. His bathroom.

And then it occurs to him that Victor hasn't broken up with him, really. Victor was curled up with him just this morning, splayed out molten on the bed and achingly sweet, like someone had poured out a hundred pitchers of honey onto the bed instead of a boy.

He tries not to think about it too much in the shower. At the end of the day this is just one of those inevitabilities everyone alive on Earth has always known: the continents will eventually sink and converge into Ultima; the sun will run out of hydrogen fuel and scorch the face of the Earth; Andromeda will collide with the Milky Way and all the star maps will have to be drawn up again. Somewhere in there Victor Nikiforov dumps his deadweight college boyfriend to get his dream job amongst the stars.

Yuuri keeps a radio on throughout the night to drown out the noise in his head, to make him feel more like he's a part of something as he's trying to sleep. He settles the dial between two distinct channels, old city pop and harp jazz crackling out of clarity when trainee pilots transmit down to the model mission control on site.

Later in the night there are talk shows hosted by amateurs that he can only just make out the sounds of, some of them drunk and too quiet to be heard. By daybreak, there are old, slow love songs playing, and the pilots have all gone to sleep.

He doesn't fall asleep for long enough to start dreaming of anything.

 

*

 

In class, Victor sits where he always sits, which is next to where Yuuri always sits, because they're like that—so Yuuri skips that class.

It's not something he plans out or even does on purpose. He just…doesn't stop eating breakfast until the cafeteria is almost entirely empty, and then when it's too embarrassing to hang around for much longer, he wanders aimlessly around campus for a while. Apparently that's something he can do, because nobody stops him.

Then there's microgravity training, and Yuuri panics about that until he realizes he doesn't actually have to pair up with anyone. That was just something Victor did. Nobody else has been holding hands or running laps side-by-side in that class; this is probably why he hasn't made any friends in the year he's been here.

The campus grounds are almost entirely empty around midday, and the only people who can see him wandering around the place are the caretakers responsible for looking after the grounds. They don't seem awfully bothered by his presence; a gardener waves at him while he's poking around in the greenhouses, where the botany students have engineered all kinds of strangely fragrant hybrid plants. Pheromone science has come a long way since the debut of commercial space travel, with the discovery of new stars leading to the synthesis of new minerals. Back when Yuuri didn't know better he would touch some of the mimosa plants to watch them shrink away, only to end up with a perfume all over his hands which was obviously very attractive to butterflies. He told Victor about this, once, and now he's fairly sure Victor keeps one growing by his windowsill for the cute photo opportunities alone.

Incidentally, the botany students aren't really supposed to sexing up the mimosas; 'shy' plants are brought up to newly colonized planets to act as makeshift seismometers before technology can be brought in. But in their defense, Yuuri as an engineering student isn't supposed to be creeping around their greenhouses and judging them.

Despite this, he hangs around long enough that by the time he makes his way down to the field for training, he's soaked in sweat and smells like a sexy, fecund dragonfly.

It's enough to make him forget about Victor right up until the class starts its lazy warm up in the late afternoon heat, the sun beating down on the buffalo grass and sizzling his classmates wherever they have skin bared. Sweat drips down Yuuri's neck. A dragonfly sits on his head. His instructor swats the air around his head and Yuuri has to jump away from him, though thankfully he's too shocked to actually scream. Victor is watching him with an expression on his face Yuuri doesn't remember ever seeing before.

Granted, most people are watching him right now. Yuuri's focused so intensely at the ground that he doesn't even realize Victor has sidled up next to him when the class starts running laps. Which—he doesn't know how he's meant to feel about this. Victor's flat-out staring at him with a frown plain on his face.

The two of them manage three steady, mute laps, enough for Yuuri to start panting quietly and pass off the hot flush on his face as exertion, and suddenly Victor asks, delicately, "Why weren't you in class earlier?"

As if he doesn't even know.

There's this carnal irritation that's been growing, spreading, and slowly crystallizing throughout Yuuri. He wants to ignore Victor, now and also for the rest of his life. He wants to sit Victor down on a stool and make him watch as Yuuri marries someone else, and has kids, and moves to fucking Hawaii or whatever—whatever he does, he wants Victor to see it all. He wants to invite Victor to that beautiful June wedding he'll never have but always dreams about. He wants Victor to know he can _do_ that, even if the truth is that he really can't.

There's an alternative which is only marginally more feasible than that—which is just straight up wrestling Victor to the ground and tussling in the mud in front of everyone, for as long as it takes until Victor confesses he was only joking about leaving the planet forever.

"Hello?" Victor repeats, shaking his hand in front of Yuuri's face. Yuuri wants to bite him. And then maybe kiss him better. Mostly he just wants to not embarrass himself in front of their classmates.

He doesn't do any of those things. He just keeps, keeps running, looking straight ahead with that stony look on his face.

"What," he says, when Victor keeps staring at him, lips pursed and brows furrowed. There's not a distasteful drop of sweat on him to be seen anywhere, just a faint sheen on his jaw, catching the golden light. "Why are you doing this?" he hisses.

"Doing what? Running with you?" Victor raises an eyebrow. "Because we always do this. Why is it a problem now?"

"I can't believe you," Yuuri snaps. Victor slows down, and comes to a stop in the middle of the running track. He's flushed pink all the way down, past his collar, and the look on his face is openly hurt, his mouth moving to say something Yuuri can't make out.

There's no spectacle. It's only a few seconds, not even long enough for anyone around them to notice—but Yuuri's got a rock in his throat making it hard to breathe, even harder not to start tearing up in front of Victor and everyone.

People are noticing now. Yuuri keeps having to wipe at his face, and if he was a slow runner before, then whatever he's doing now probably doesn't qualify as running at all.

Victor keeps running. For all Yuuri can see—which isn't very much—he's bolting ahead. No more dead weight, see. Who can say why Victor wanted to put up with him in the first place.

Secretly Yuuri figures that in five years, kids in the junior Cassini division will have reason to hang posters of Victor on their bedroom walls. People will see pictures of Victor, sixteen and breathtaking and gazing forlornly into the cosmos, and say, "Looking at Nikiforov, you can see why the Russians beat us into space."

It'll be easier to deal with losing Victor once he's actually gone. When Yuuri doesn't have to breathe him in practically wherever he goes; when Victor finally figures out he hasn't been breathed into existence as Yuuri's guardian angel; when the two of them have finally diffused forever into two different worlds—that's when he'll be okay again.

 

*

 

After that, Victor starts breaking new P.R.s almost every day, and he doesn't try to talk to Yuuri in lessons anymore. The marked space between them is left alone for the most part, like a radioactive dumpsite, but then Victor used to never sit by himself, even before Yuuri.

He had friends he used to sit with, Yuuri knows. He _has_ friends still, so Yuuri isn't sure why none of them seem to want to sit in his old place, or why Victor doesn't just up and go sit by someone new.

For someone like Victor it must be strange, although truthfully Yuuri doesn't remember ever taking much notice of him before they met, or how it even came to be that Victor suddenly gravitated towards him like it was the most natural thing in the world.

It was back in the spring, he remembers that much. Victor marks the exact date as New Year's Eve, but Yuuri thinks Victor remained in his hazy periphery right up until April at least. And then one day Victor ran besides him during training laps. And then the next day Victor sat next to him in his biology class, in a hall with at least forty open seats. And they kept running together like that, and at some point Yuuri had to overcome his stifling awkwardness and confusion, and ask Victor for his name.

The point is that Yuuri's been ruining things by accident since day one, and it really shouldn't come as a surprise that things are over now. On the first Friday night after that phone call, Yuuri drinks a six-pack and goes about tucking Victor's things into a box.

Most of his clothes are already in a laundry basket, although Yuuri keeps finding wrinkled t-shirts that smell like sweat and faded perfume tucked away in pillowcases or under the bed. There's that awful silk negligée in the underwear drawer, and Yuuri feels his face burn just thinking about it, but there's no doubt that needs washing too, so he throws it in the basket.

Later, when Yuuri is sitting on his bed wondering if the laundromat will still be open at midnight, and whether or not he'd get kicked out if he tried to talk about his problems to a washing machine (like Mari used to do), his phone lights up with a message.

He expects to see another text from his mother about making sure Victor gets the bag of cotton cakes she's sending him for his birthday, even though the chances are Victor will be gone by then—a thought which makes Yuuri's heart sink further down into his belly—but instead it's Victor himself, telling Yuuri he's going to stop by to pick up his things.

 _Finally_ , Yuuri thinks, because lately he feels like he's been sitting on a floating island made up entirely of Victor's boxer briefs. Yuuri never realized Victor had three pairs of underwear with the American flag printed on them—he assumed it was just one pair that Victor really liked—and now he knows but he doesn't understand why.

It's also confusing that Victor's decided to come around in the middle of the night for his things—but then Yuuri thinks he understands the thought process behind that decision once Victor actually shows up at his door, wearing a linty hoodie and too-large boy shorts that Yuuri's never seen before.

Yuuri thinks he stares too long at the shorts, trying to figure out whether they belong to someone else because they hang so low on Victor's hips, or if he's just lost weight in the meantime. He definitely pulls a face, because Victor is leaning in the doorway looking embarrassed when Yuuri finally looks up again.

"Hey," Victor croaks, after a moment of tense silence.

"Um." Yuuri steps back, rubs his neck. He gestures for Victor to come in. "I was actually just…cleaning up."

It's obvious, just from the way Victor walks and from the heavy hint in the air, that he's been drinking, which also explains why he decided to come around so late. Yuuri stands awkwardly in the corner and observes as Victor pauses in the middle of the room with his back to him.

Victor's hair is a mess, flyaway strands floating about his ruddy face, and his fingertips are twitching. It does something unsavory to Yuuri, the sight of him so blatantly undone where before he'd refuse to leave their room without a little face paint.

Victor sifts through the laundry basket on the bed, taking care not to undo all the folding Yuuri's done. "Are these all my clothes…?"

"Most of them. I don't know if I found everything," Yuuri admits.

"Probably not," Victor mumbles.

Yuuri frowns. He wraps his arms around himself, shifting quietly from foot to foot. "I haven't touched your things in the bathroom," he says.

Victor turns his head briefly to glance at him, then heads through to the bathroom, leaving the door slightly ajar after him so Yuuri can make out the vague shape of his movements. This whole time Victor's been unnervingly quiet, avoiding him like if he looks at Yuuri for too long then Yuuri will make him leave.

In the end he opts to sit on the bed while Victor rummages through the medicine cabinet. For a moment he considers telling Victor about the cake his mother wants to send, because his mother keeps reminding him about it and Yuuri doesn't know what to tell her, and then maybe Victor will understand that Yuuri doesn't hate him anymore tonight than he did last week—that this is just what hurts the least, and it's better to rip this plaster off sooner than later.

He doesn't say any of that though, just sits in the dark of the bedroom with his head full of static. The radio is on, but nothing is getting through; Yuuri thinks the storm might have knocked the signal out, or maybe someone launched a rocket at the campus satellite dish again.

Outside it's pitch black, and this is one of those cloudy nights where no moonlight shines down through the windows in the ceiling. The lights in the room are off, and the only thing illuminating the room is the sliver of light coming from the bathroom.

The rustling noises from the bathroom stop after a few minutes, and Yuuri hasn't missed that Victor hasn't even brought a bag for his things, though he suspects Victor's actually not realized it himself yet.

"Are you okay in there?" Yuuri asks tentatively, standing up to hover by the door, not quite looking in.

Several long moments pass, and there's no response, so Yuuri peers past the door to see Victor bracing himself against the sink. His knuckles have gone white and his shoulders have tensed up, and his reflection in the mirror is a cruel testament to what Yuuri's suspected since Victor first showed up at his door.

"I," Yuuri tries, and his throat goes dry. "If you tell me what's wrong, I—I'll listen." He swallows. "I just. I can't be mad at you right now," he says, because it's true. He really doesn't know what Victor's been doing that he can drink and lose that much weight at the same time, and there's a wretched part of his brain that wishes his body could do the same thing, but he'd never wish that on Victor. There's always this twinge of guilt he feels every single time they go drinking, and sometimes when he touches Victor, like he's going to ruin him before anyone else can ever get near him.

Victor takes a slow, shuddering breath, and says, "Do you want me to go?"

Yuuri huffs quietly, stepping closer to stand behind Victor and touching a hand gingerly to his shoulder. At that gentle reminder, Victor's eyelashes flutter and he straightens the bent curve of his spine.

"I think," Yuuri murmurs, "you've had too much to drink. And it's late."

Still gazing at the mirror, Victor croons softly, "Baby it's cold outside…" which is yet another indicator of his staggering sobriety. He puffs out a sigh, finally looking over at Yuuri. "What happens tomorrow if I stay?"

"I'll probably have to hold your hair while you vomit."

Victor purses his lips. He looks significantly at the mirror again. "I got drunk for a reason."

Yuuri narrows his eyes at him. "Whatever it is you were planning doesn't seem to have worked out."

Victor tips his chin up at him, familiarly haughty, and mutters under his breath, "You don't know that."

Puffing out an exasperated sigh, Yuuri turns to leave the bathroom. He's tempted to go out and find some food to sober Victor up, but at the same time he wants to know exactly what that reason is, and he's more likely to find it if Victor falls asleep in his bed tonight on an empty stomach.

In the morning they can have breakfast, as long as Yuuri doesn't kiss him.

Victor stays in the bathroom for a while longer while Yuuri broods over how suddenly small his twin-sized bed appears to be, as if it shrunk to the size of a bird's nest while he was in the bathroom. At least it's soft. And it still smells like laundry detergent.

"I don't suppose you want me to pull out a mattress for you," Yuuri says, already curled up around a pillow, when Victor finally comes out of the bathroom.

"Why do you have to make it so hard to get into bed with you," Victor grumbles as he's climbing into said bed. He buries his face in a pillow and breathes in, and all the tension leaves his body like snow melting in a microwave. "I missed your musk."

"Don't say that," Yuuri groans.

"You smell like dirt but—" Victor yawns "—in a good way."

Yuuri rolls over to face Victor so he can give him a _look_ , but Victor's eyes are already closed, his eyelashes still wet and sticky from tears, his cheeks a sore and tender shade of red—but the look on his face like the calm after a storm.

It's the most trouble Victor's ever caused him.

 

*

 

Around daybreak Yuuri wakes up to the sound of crickets and light rain. He's torn between whiplash and nostalgia when he sees Victor asleep next to him, his hair spilling around his face in rivulets.

Right now, Yuuri thinks Victor looks like a little slip of a thing, and it feels like he keeps getting smaller. His hoodie has ridden up his stomach in the night so Yuuri can see the pouch there, not so much baby fat anymore as it is probably all the drinking and heaving breakfasts at the diner. Yuuri takes a deep, quiet breath and lifts his hand onto Victor's bare, warm waist.

Any one of these days, he thinks. Victor's going to shoot up and gain weight and get stronger. More sharp. More mean, if that's even possible. Yuuri wishes he could see it. In fact he was almost certain he would get to see it.

He drags his fingers lightly around in soothing motions, caught between wanting to let Victor sleep and wanting to share this moment. Victor does eventually stir, his face screwing up briefly before he burrows closer to Yuuri. There's no way he manages to fit his head under Yuuri's chin while unconscious, and to test the theory Yuuri flexes the fingers he's got curled over Victor's hip. Beneath him, Victor arches his spine against him, sensitive now that he hasn't been touched in a while.

Yuuri clicks his tongue but other than that, he's happy to let Victor hide his face against his neck, as long as it means he can't see the face Yuuri is making above him.

Maybe he's just sleep deprived and in denial, and Victor is definitely still drunk and needy, but he thinks he can see it from Victor's perspective now.

People have known about the end of the world as they know it for hundreds of years. They know that the sun will swell and grow and burn; that before it stutters out, it will shine so brightly that the surface of the earth begins to blister. They know that the death of a star is far beyond what evolution can do to keep anything alive.

And then they just…forget about it. There's nothing to be done. They won't cut their time any shorter than it already is; neither will he.

For they already know that what's to come—

( _Fruit, mankind, unconditional love, and helium-3;_ but not in that order)

—is well worth the wait, the star, and the end of the world.

 

*

 

489257.18 — _present day_

"You know what I miss," Victor says, out of the blue.

He's supposed to be sleeping. Yuuri moved him to a care ward for a reason. But he's also incredibly weak for the way Victor is right now in his cot, in a chrysalis of blankets and with a bag of ice cubes on his head. Right now Yuuri definitely has the cutest patient in the medbay. There's no way the nurses aren't jealous.

"Tell me what you miss," Yuuri asks absently from where he's sitting, his head pillowed on Victor's legs.

"Real air," Victor sighs. Then he scowls at the face Yuuri makes. "Don't give me that look."

"I don't really understand," Yuuri confesses, trying not to be too obviously amused. "I like our air? It has oxygen in it."

"And I miss the sea," Victor barrels on. "And I miss seeing flowers just…growing in places."

A part of Yuuri wants to remind Victor sternly that he's the only person on the whole ship who can go out and see those things whenever he wants. He knows for a fact the main reason Otabek accompanied him and Chris down to Isonoe was because he hadn't seen sunlight in two years. Minami has never seen the ocean. Before Victor and Phichit, Yuuri only ever got to see flowers when _Cupid_ went planetside, which tended to only happen every several months.

But Victor hasn't even been on _Cupid_ for a year. There's no way he knows how spoilt he must sound to everyone else, which is as endearing as it is frustrating. So Yuuri doesn't clip him around the ear, but rather rises to his feet and gives Victor a thoughtful look; there's something he's been planning on doing for a while now that lines up nicely with what Victor seems to want.

"It's getting late," Yuuri says, "I should really go."

Victor doesn't hesitate to make a moue at him. "You're going to bed?" He extends his arm in a gesture Yuuri doesn't understand at all—until he does, and then he flushes with embarrassment because Victor actually believes Yuuri's going to kiss his hand farewell. The obscenity of it all.

"Not yet," Yuuri tells him. "I…have a few things I need to do."

"You wouldn't be keeping secrets from me if I wasn't bed bound," Victor grumbles.

"You're not bed bound. You have the flu."

At which point Victor shoos him away, wanting nothing to do with him anymore. Clearly, Yuuri thinks, he has no idea what's in store for him.

 

*

 

At eleven o'clock at night, Yuuri is somewhat thrown off when he bumps into Lilia in the botanical gardens, which have bloomed into a sprawling, fragrant wilderness since Victor brought Phichit the new gadgets from Vegas.

"Hello…Captain?" Yuuri says mildly, his head tilted slightly in confusion.

He expects more or less only the barest of formalities from Baranovskaya, and maybe a line of questioning on why he wasn't at the post-Iwatoka conference—but to his surprise when she turns to him, she has an unabashed smile on her face, and her eyes are bright in a way Yuuri never really thought he'd see.

"Good evening, Nurse Katsuki," she says, waving a rose at him in greeting. Yuuri doesn't—he has no idea what's happening to him. To her. Obviously Lilia is going to be peripherally aware of ship gossip, but that doesn't explain why she'd use his dumb, ridiculous nickname.

"Ah. Are you looking for a gift for Isabella?" That would be sweet, actually. Maybe this is what Otabek meant earlier when he said Lilia was actually happy about the kid.

"The flowers are for a friend of mine," Lilia explains. "But I also sent Isabella a gift with my regards."

Yuuri nods vacantly, glancing over Lilia's shoulder to see Phichit sneaking around like a scoundrel behind some shrubbery. "I was also getting some flowers. For a friend."

At that, Lilia gives him a meaningful look, and perhaps she thinks she's said too much, or she simply breaks through the uncharacteristically cute trance she's in, because after that she pats him on the shoulder and strides past him, as if neither of them had said anything at all beyond formalities. Yuuri shakes his head, and doesn't look back to where her heels click steady against the linoleum tiles.

"Oh my God," Phichit hisses through a rose bush, once she's surely gone. "What was that? Who was she getting flowers for? And why are you in here so late?"

"Hello to you too," Yuuri grumbles.

"Did you say were getting someone flowers?" Phichit walks out from behind the rose bush, dusting off his suspenders, which—that at least explains why he was hiding from Lilia. At some point or another Phichit had some hand-embroidered patches of King Tiberius made and then he sewed them onto his gardening clothes. "I can't believe you would cheat on Victor like that. He's such a little sweetheart. He's always walking around in that bright red hoodie that makes him look like a supermarket apple."

"Okay, I'm not—" Yuuri halts. _Bright red hoodie_. "—Wait, that's…you're thinking of the other one. Phichit, he's like, three feet tall."

"You're so disrespectful sometimes, do you know that?" Phichit tells him frankly. "I cannot believe what I'm hearing right now."

"You have my boyfriend mixed up with his baby roommate!"

"Do I?" Phichit frowns. "Actually you're probably right." ( _Probably_ , Yuuri thinks scathingly.) "I think I like the smaller one better though? He comes down here sometimes to check out the bees."

"You have bees now?"

"I always have bees," Phichit says, like that's a normal thing to say at all. "They do all my pollinating work for me. They're my babies. My bay-bees."

"Okay," Yuuri murmurs, trying to erase every single thing that's been said in the last ten minutes from his brain forever. "Anyway." He clears his throat. "I'm not cheating on Victor. I'm seducing him," Yuuri declares.

And then when Phichit scrunches up his whole face in response, Yuuri snaps, "What?"

"I thought you said he once sat on you and he was hard after a minute," Phichit says blankly. "And then ten hours later you bought him lingerie?"

Yuuri stares at him like if he just concentrates hard enough then Phichit will cease to exist. He doesn't even remember telling Phichit all this, which means he definitely got blackout drunk at one point or another and texted Phichit everything. That is shameful.

"I'm just saying," Phichit continues, "I feel like you're past the point of having to seduce him? But you guys obviously have some weird plutonium kind of love shit going on that I don't know about."

Something that's never quite occurred to Yuuri before now is that nobody on the ship except Chris knows that he and Victor knew each other long before they met on _Cupid_. And though he keeps it to himself, he's fully aware that it's a remarkable thing. Sometimes at night, when he's in bed, all he has to do is remember, and suddenly he feels these little starbursts in his belly, like his heart has dropped down to the bottom of his belly and is beating away there.

"Victor was my…" _First love_ , Yuuri thinks, but that's embarrassing. _First kiss. First boy to meet my mother._ "…sweetheart, back when we were teenagers."

"Oh." Phichit's eyes widen. " _Oh!_ And you found each other again?"

"Right." Yuuri rubs the back of his neck. "I don't know, is that…bad? It's like I haven't changed at all since I was a kid. I still want to bring him flowers."

"Unbelievable," Phichit utters, steering him towards the lush bushels of flowers growing on the far end of the room. "Did you have anything in mind?"

"You might think it's boring," Yuuri mumbles. "But he has a favorite."

 

*

 

The lights in the care ward are low by the time Yuuri gets back, and when he quietly opens the door to Victor's room the harsh light of the medbay is a lightning bolt across the dark floor, so he quickly shuts the door behind him without trying to make too much noise.

In the dark, he hears Victor mumble, "Yuuri?"

"Shhh," Yuuri whispers, creeping over to the stool by Victor's cot. "This is secret."

"It's just us in here, you know…" Victor rumbles. He's still stirring, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. Poor thing. Yuuri perches himself on the stool and settles himself as Victor is waking up. It's important that the room is dark. He doesn't want Victor to see what's in his lap, or worse, suffer a rude awakening.

"The nurses on night shift will come to check on you if we make too much noise." Yuuri leans over and tucks Victor's loose hair behind his ear. "Did any of them bother you at all?"

Victor sniffles, his eyes still screwed closed. "Mmm…they told me I'm pretty…? And I have nice blood pressure?"

"Oh? Is that all?"

"I wasn't terribly nice to them," Victor admits. "I kept telling them I have my own nurse to take care of me."

" _Victor_ ," Yuuri says scoldingly, but there's no way Victor misses the laughter in his voice. In the darkness Victor reaches out again, grasping blindly for something until Yuuri tangles their fingers together, pulling Victor's hand into his lap, next to the flowers. Yuuri suspects he accidentally lets Victor's hand brush against the petals, and that Victor's awake enough now to know Yuuri didn't only stop by to say _hello_ , so he gets on with it. "I know you can't really see properly right now," he murmurs, "but earlier you were saying…you missed having flowers."

For several breaths, Victor is as quiet as Yuuri's ever heard him before. Gingerly, Yuuri lets go of his hand so he can lay the sunflowers in Victor's lap.

"I know it's not much," he says, sheepish. "I don't know, I—I'd build you a house in an orange grove, if I could. If you wanted."

Finally, Victor says, his voice gone hoarse, "Why would you say that?"

Maybe he's pushing it here, right now, Yuuri thinks, since Victor's never given the slightest indication that he ever wants to settle down. Victor's not down-to-earth, there's no angel perched on his shoulder telling him to follow the light of any one moon, and it could just be he's destined for rooting around space in a pink starship.

Victor sits up properly, reaching out for him again. This time Yuuri waits before he takes his hand, but Victor keeps looking, squinting until he manages to find Yuuri's shoulder. From there he taps his fingertips along Yuuri's collar, then up the bow of his neck, his touch light and uncertain until Yuuri wraps his fingers around Victor's wrist.

"I want you to follow up for once," Victor says. He cups Yuuri's chin. "Come here."

Yuuri does—he lets Victor tug him closer, until he's leaning over Victor's cot, until he has to plant one hand down by Victor's waist to support himself.

"I've missed you," Victor complains, "every day, since we met."

 _That doesn't make sense_ , Yuuri's about to say, but Victor's been waiting for a long time, no matter how impatient, to do this—so he lets Victor lay his hands on him for once, and tilts his head for a kiss, his heart stuttering in his chest as Victor runs his fingertips feather light up and down the bow of his neck. It only lasts a second before Victor pulls away, no doubt blushing, his hand still curled around Yuuri's nape when Yuuri licks his lips and presses against him again. That he can get away with this is enough to get him hot; that Victor has wanted it for so long sends a heady thrum of energy through Yuuri like a hiccup.

Abruptly, Yuuri feels like the temperature has dropped twenty degrees. He's shivering for the wrong reasons now. Victor is staring at him wide-eyed when he pulls away—in an unflattering way, like he's horrified by what they've just done. Yuuri frowns at him, confused.

The lights are on. There has been a miscalculation.

"Oh," Yuuri realizes.

" _Katsuki_ ," Larissa hisses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ["My love is a hundred / pitchers of honey. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script / is not language but a map. What we feel / most has / no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds."](https://nataliejabbar.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/my-love-is-a-hundred-pitchers-of-honey/) — Alfred A. Knopf, "THE GREAT FIRES: POEMS, 1982-1992"
> 
> ["The universe would now contract, and someday perish in a conflagration of entropy, only to increase in density, burst, and expand again, causing further high velocity redistributions of serpents, fruit, men, women, helium-3, lithium-7, deuterium, and helium-4."](http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/valente_08_10/) — Catherynne M. Valente, "Thirteen Ways of Looking At Space/Time"


	11. Chapter 11

_There should be stars for great wars_  
_like ours._  
_There ought to be awards_  
_and plenty of champagne for the survivors._  
  
_[…]_  
  
_Maybe in this season, drunk_  
_and sentimental, I’m willing to admit_  
_a part of me, crazed and kamikaze,_  
_ripe for anarchy, loves still._

 

— _One Last Poem For Richard_ , Sandra Cisneros

 

*

 

That night what's truly cruel is Yuuri only gets to kiss Victor for a few seconds before he realizes what Victor's actually vying for is some water and a tube of his cherry chapstick—but by then Larissa is already viciously berating him for trying to debase what was once a hygienic sanctuary, and Yuuri doesn't have much time before one of the nurses arrives to check in on Victor.

"Just one more," Victor pleads, barely audible over the shrill noise of Larissa's indignation, cupping Yuuri's face in his hands.

"Ridiculous," Yuuri mutters under his breath, drawing up to full height. "I don't want anyone hearing about this, okay?"

"You won't even kiss me goodnight." Victor slumps back in defeat, already sulking. "Might as well publicly renounce me."

" _Hush_."

"Tcha. Go away." Victor shoos him off. Yuuri's so fond of him it's humiliating. He can only hope Victor sees the admonishing look on his face for what it is. "I never liked you anyway."

"You love me," Yuuri says, all dreamy, forgetting where he is and what he's doing.

Victor peers up at him, exasperated, rolls his eyes, ever the prima donna—but then Yuuri runs his hand through Victor's hair one last time, and his gaze softens.

Victor gives a plaintive sigh as he's leaving, and Yuuri tries not to think about that too much once he's lying alone in his bed, a warm film of sweat forming on his forehead and over the skin where his heart pulses. He feels dizzy. He wants to call someone. He wants to call his mother and tell her he met a boy, but she already knows about him—and seeing as she was there when Victor left and Yuuri stopped answering her calls, she probably misses him too.

 

*

 

Yuuri spends the better part of his morning in the conference room, trying not to spill coffee all over himself while Victor brushes his fingertips up and down his inseam beneath the table. Acknowledging him would mean giving Victor the attention he's vying for, and Yuuri is set on not rewarding this kind of behavior. Acknowledging him would also mean drawing attention to the fact that Victor is here at all, when in fact nobody invited him to this meeting. Victor's only here because it's where Yuuri is—Yuuri can't place his finger on whether he's getting away with this because it's obnoxiously adorable, or because everyone is too focused on the subject at hand.

"Did we get anything useful at all out of that incredibly _expensive_ venture?" Lilia sniffs. She's referring, of course, to the Iwatoka research mission—which in hindsight was such an overt failure it's almost funny. Almost. Evidently there wasn't even a post-landing conference because they'd come back with so little data it would've been too embarrassing.

"We discovered an alien species," Phichit says.

"Only you did that," Chris points out, flatly. "And then you smuggled it back with you to force it to make fertilizer."

"She actually makes fertilizer whether I want her to or not," Phichit says matter-of-factly.

"King Tiberius is a girl?" Yuuri blurts, instead of saying anything helpful whatsoever, which has been a running theme throughout this entire meeting.

A shadow crosses Lilia's face. "I think that's enough for today," she says, and the conference room is suddenly filled with the sound of chairs squeaking, people making beelines for the elevators. "Katsuki, a word."

Next to him, Victor flashes Yuuri an open look of worry, even if he's done nothing to warrant it.

Yuuri opens his mouth, then closes it, brows furrowed. "I'll see you later," he murmurs to Victor, who nods and squeezes his knee before getting up to leave.

When they're finally alone, Yuuri looks up at Lilia expectantly, thoughts swirling around in his head—maybe he'll get rapped on the knuckles for inviting Victor to waive rules as he pleases. Maybe it's all the time he's taken off for seemingly no good reason.

He glances down, apprehensively, at what he's wearing. It's early in the day but he'd already started working when the meeting was called, so he'd turned up wearing scrubs with sunny-side eggs patterned on them. Wonderful.

"You're not in trouble," Lilia says, peering down at him and seeming rather amused. "I need to talk to you about your contract."

"Oh," Yuuri says, deflating a little.

"It's been five years since your arrival, and obviously you've grown since," Lilia tells him. "Your contract has expired, and it's time for you to consider your options."

"…Oh," Yuuri says, again. He hasn't been thinking about his options at all. He's been thinking about taking Victor to dinner and what colors would suit him on a new coma-proof EVA suit. "It must have slipped my mind."

"I see." Lilia tilts her head. "I believe you've grown quite close to some of the crew. You must know it's in my interest to keep you around."

Yuuri stares at her. "Because it would hurt people's feelings?"

"Because you are responsible for mending limbs around here," Lilia amends. "On the other hand, it occurs to me that perhaps you don't intend to work on this ship for the rest of your life." (Yuuri shifts uncomfortably in his seat.) "I don't know what your priorities are at the moment, and I certainly expect you to sleep on this, but know that I'll accommodate whatever choice you make."

"I see," Yuuri says quietly. A moment passes, uncomfortably cold, and he rises to his feet. "I'll have to think about it. Thank you."

 

*

 

Yuuri has slept in the same little bed in the same little room since he was nineteen and working towards certification. He and Minami share a rice cooker and a tiny fridge full of home food, and sometimes Minami pretends he doesn't realize he's wearing Yuuri's clothes whereas Yuuri is upfront about stealing Minami's. And it's nice. Before Minami he'd been roommates with people who were quieter and much more civilized, and Yuuri had hated it, strangely enough. He'd worked a lot of overtime to avoid coming home to some new acquaintance, and even then he'd wake up early and scamper off to the communal showers, which were usually empty early in the morning. Sometimes he'd hide away in Chris's room for the night, which somehow had seemed less intimidating.

He doesn't do that anymore, although Victor might. Maybe those two have sleepovers and talk about boys.

Yuuri spends the rest of the afternoon fractionating blood in the medbay, but he also spends it thinking about what he likes about _Cupid,_ and what makes him want to self-immolate. It's nice that he can go about his work wearing what is essentially breakfast-themed pajamas, and sometimes people think it's cute and they compliment him, but at the same time sometimes they vomit on him. Usually it's accidental. Sometimes Yuuri wonders.

Lilia seems to think he has _options_ here. What options? Yuuri doesn't keep an eye on nearby practices because there aren't any. _Cupid_ is an ice cold titan moving at a million miles an hour through unchartered space. Anytime he looks out the window and sees something less than a thousand miles away, it's streaking past in a hot blur.

And there's still the issue that in all the years Yuuri's been living on _Cupid_ he's never managed to receive a transmission from his mother.

From time to time Cupid docks in a relatively civilized territory, where they might have a cross-cosmos communication hub, and for a significant fee Yuuri can see if anyone has left a message for him there. There's never anything from her. He's sure there's a very good reason why—maybe it's too difficult or expensive, or (bless her heart) she doesn't know how.

But sometimes he thinks she surely tried, even if it was only once or twice. He wonders if the letters simply didn't make it. Maybe they're floating around in the intergalactic space between them, or lying there stranded and unopened on the shores of some lonely address.

If he sees her again he could ask. But if she'd never even tried, he wouldn't mind. She would've known she'd get nothing back; she may as well have prayed to him.

The obvious thing to do is to stay put now that he's happy. But renewing his contract would entail five years—maybe more this time—of not going home, and these days his family's only indication he's still alive is the money that gets wired to them every month.

Yuuri keeps thinking he'll work on that, and then he never does.

He stares down at the floor.

Which is…glowing?

"Larissa, you're supposed to be watching her," Yuuri grumbles, scooping Isabella's fragile young off of the floor. She's recently been granted a softly glowing snail trail, which is Larissa's doing, because as fate would have it she's an advanced little thing who escapes her overlords more frequently than anyone would expect.

"I _am_ watching her."

"She was on the floor," Yuuri says, nose wrinkling in distaste.

"Biometric scan indicates she was enjoying herself down there," Larissa says. "Before you interrupted, obviously."

Yuuri ignores her in favor of dusting off Isabella's kid. "Hello, you," he murmurs, studying her sleepy face. "How are we feeling today?"

"Fine, thank you," says Otabek, who brushes neatly past him, decidedly ignoring the little one fidgeting around in his arms.

Yuuri stares after him, frozen. Unbelievable. Otabek should not be allowed to make jokes at all.

"Right," he says to himself, trying to ground himself. There's—drool! On his shoulder! The world as he knows it is falling apart.

He bites his lip. A couple of lab assistants are staring and whispering to each other, and Yuuri appreciates that they have some first-class reasons to do so, but that doesn't mean he's not allowed to hate it. Everybody else has made it clear they don't care if literal infants are wriggling around on the hospital floor, so Yuuri marches up the front desk with his small passenger intact and has the girls at the front desk deal with her, because she seems like she wants to rest, and anyway, Yuuri still has work to do.

 

*

 

Of course, what Yuuri's trying not to think about is how Victor factors into all of this.

Several years ago he'd drawn into himself for months after Victor's ascent. Now he looks back and there's still an echo of that glamorous pain. It'd left such an impression that for several years afterwards he'd never wanted much to do with anyone else at all. Or maybe that was the sertraline. Either way, romance fell to the wayside for a while. The same cannot be said for Victor, who by all appearances threw himself into the deep end and came up with hard calluses.

What's discomfiting is he could do to Victor what was done to him.

It's not something he seriously considers, but he thinks and thinks about it—would Victor cry? It's the least he could do. Yuuri's heart seriously warms at the mental image of Victor's face crumpling upon hearing the news that Yuuri would be leaving _Cupid_ without him. Victor has such a tender complexion that when he cries his face gets all fortunately rosy and inflamed. He gets particular about it. A part of Yuuri suspects _he_ is the reason Victor gets particular about it. If he's not lashing out at someone for being taken with it then he's a bashful creature who goes off to hide and recover in some soft, dark den.

It's not often that Yuuri wonders about the people Victor's left in the past, but now he can't help it. He likes to think Victor was as ruthless with them as he was with Yuuri when he first woke up in _Cupid's_ medbay, sore all over and aching.

These days he longs violently for the chance to go back and upend that first collision. To shove his past self out of the way, lock the door, and sit quietly by Victor's side. That first revelation could have been so much sweeter if Yuuri had laid it on thick, carded his gloved fingers gingerly through Victor's limp hair, carefully avoiding all his fresh, ruby-colored gashes while his poor man was only half awake and completely unaware. And then to have Victor wake up and feel confused at the sight of him, his old college sweetheart perfectly happy to tend to his wounds—'very cute nurse,' indeed—a breathtaking reminder that Victor was in love with him once, for a reason.

Who knows what Victor would have had to say to that. Certainly there wouldn't have been any excuse for him to be as vicious as he was. In the company of strangers Victor is gracious and cosmopolitan; to a fawning nurse he would've been halting at worst and an incorrigible flirt at best.

It's unfortunate that window of opportunity is now gone, Yuuri thinks, cupping a hand over his mouth to try and muffle his laughter, because—and it's terrible that he's even thinking about this—after all that he could have pretended not to know who Victor was either.

 

*

 

The forecast at dinner is drab. In the mess hall when he sits down across from Victor in their usual spot, he's met with chilling silence and a stony-faced beau.

"So," Yuuri says, halting. He tries not to look directly at Victor's face and ends up staring intently at his throat. His jawline. God, his jawline. "Tell me about your day."

Victor narrows his eyes at him and Yuuri has to lean back a little. "I was just talking to Chris," he says, delicately, in a way that doesn't do anything to help diffuse the unease between them. One of these days Yuuri should really look into what kind of conversations Chris and Victor are apparently having, but then at the same time what he doesn't know can't hurt him.

"I like your nails," Yuuri tells him, looking down at Victor's oddly twitchy fingertips. This morning they were bare; now they're pink and they shine like fruit jelly. When he reaches out to touch them Victor lets out a noise of frustration and bats his hand away.

"What happened in that meeting?" Victor demands.

"Nothing." Yuuri frowns at him, cradling his hand as if it were wounded. "What do you think happened?"

"I think you got fired because you refused to file our relationship with HR," snaps Victor.

Yuuri doesn't really know how to respond to that, and when he finally looks Victor in the eye there isn't the slightest indication that he's joking, so he takes a few deep breaths and stares pointedly out the window at his side for as long as it takes to feel like the flush on his face has gone away. And then back at Victor, who radiates impatience, and whose food is going cold.

"I wish people would stop teasing you like this," Yuuri murmurs, poking at the food on his plate.

"So it's not true," Victor says.

"There is no HR department," Yuuri tells him. At first Victor gives him a dubious look, and then he taps his finger against the table, staring down at his lap, brooding still. Yuuri has to wonder why they bother going to dinner together at all anymore because certainly neither of them ever get to eat anything like this. "All that happened is my contract expired."

Immediately Victor looks up at him, and straightens. "Oh." He seems to loosen up. "So you can just renew it and keep working here."

"I could," Yuuri says lightly. He rests his chin on his hand and looks up at Victor expectantly. Underneath the table he feels Victor foot slide between his.

"Why not," Victor murmurs, tilting his head. "What are you thinking of doing?"

"Nothing, yet," Yuuri says tentatively. "I have to think about what I want."

He's teasing, he knows, but he watches carefully anyway as Victor considers him, and some terrible part of him aches for an indecent proposal. It's not a lot to ask for, except Yuuri isn't asking at all—he's casually sipping lemonade and waiting for Victor to say something immodest, wondering if he'd really have the audacity to do something about Yuuri leaving. Humility at this point just wouldn't do.

He doesn't expect to actually get what he wants.

"Yuuri," Victor says tentatively, looking down at him with a strangely subdued fondness, like he's dealing with a child who's made an innocent mistake. He slides his hand over Yuuri's.

Yuuri looks down at their hands, face impassive. He glances up at Victor. He cocks an eyebrow.

"You know, it hurts me very much when you go around saying things like that," Victor begins ardently. Yuuri's heart throbs. His hand is being lifted and Victor is (slowly, excruciatingly) kissing his fingertips. It's all so very Russian. "Like some Casanova, mocking me with all your handsome companions, acting like I don't exist."

Yuuri's hand is trembling. It'd be difficult for anyone else to hear what Victor's saying, but it feels like all the noise around them only makes this impossibly more shameless.

"You should feel sorry for me," Victor croons, softly kissing Yuuri's knuckles, in other words tormenting him, "since I go around each day believing that you and I are in love."

If only he could reach back through time and show this off. Yuuri still looks at Victor sometimes and sees the same idiot teenager who would wipe his face and moan dramatically every time Yuuri so much as dared to kiss him chastely on the cheek. Sixteen-year-old Victor Nikiforov would be outraged if someone were to tell him he would somehow grow up to be so pathetically lovelorn. He would be humiliated to find himself wanting nothing more than to sit sweetly in some warm lap, wearing his heart like a crown.

"You're so," Yuuri starts, then falters and flatlines. "I should…"

…should what?

He didn't actually think he'd get this far. Mostly he just wanted to know if Victor would ever deign to offer himself up like that—and now Yuuri has him, but he has no idea what he's supposed to do with him.

He slackens his shoulders and rubs the back of his neck, while Victor idly pets his other hand, patiently waiting.

"…I should go sort out my contract," Yuuri says, rising to his feet.

"I'll wait," Victor tells him softly, but the way he says it and the look in his eyes has Yuuri feeling like he should hurry up and engage him already. "Ah, before you go," he says, reaching out as Yuuri turns to leave.

"Mm?"

Victor looks up at him demurely from underneath his lashes. "Give me a kiss."

Ridiculous.

For a few seconds Yuuri considers simply tapping two fingers against his mouth and then pressing them against Victor's lips, like he usually does when people are looking, but it's no secret anymore that Nurse Katsuki has a favorite, plus Victor bites him sometimes—so he leans down and gently tips back Victor's head, drinking in the sweet sounds he makes when Yuuri kisses him properly.

And of course, Victor can deal with their untouched plates.

 

*

 

Naturally when Yuuri goes to see Otabek in his office about his contract, Chris is already there, sitting on Otabek's desk and peeling clementines and being a general disgrace of a captain, while Otabek sits and looks determined to pretend Chris isn't there at all. Chris always seems very enthusiastic about his friendship with Otabek which, as far as Yuuri can tell, only really goes one way.

"There he is," Chris greets when Yuuri shuts the door behind him. "Man of the hour. Nurse Katsuki, what's all this I'm hearing about late-night debauchery in one of your patient's care wards?"

Yuuri's eyes widen. "You heard about that?"

"I was just talking to our esteemed Dr. Altin about it," Chris says, giving Otabek's hand a friendly pat.

"Um, okay," Yuuri says, haltingly. "I actually came here to talk to you about my contract."

Otabek sits up straight. He also nudges at Chris's thigh taking up half of his desk and obscuring his view of Yuuri, but Chris only purrs in his direction, so Otabek promptly abandons that line of inquiry. "It'd be no trouble at all to have it renewed immediately," he says. "You've already made your decision?"

Yuuri shifts anxiously from foot to foot. "Sort of. I think—now is the time for me to take some time off. If I can. I know it puts you in a bad position."

Chris sniffs. "Goodness, Yuuri, you can't imagine how difficult it would be to hire a replacement for you. Ask for whatever you want."

"Four weeks off," Yuuri says. "It's been five years. I'd like to go visit my family."

"Meaning you'd come back afterwards?" Otabek asks, tapping his fingers against the desk. When Yuuri nods, he says, "That sounds fine to me. If you leave in a few days, we can discuss the terms of your new contract when you get back."

There's a moment, afterwards, where Otabek and Chris are simply staring at him, waiting quietly for his response—when suddenly Yuuri realizes that in a few days he could actually be going home for the first time in almost seven years, and a wobbly smile overtakes his whole face. When he sniffles and rubs his eyes bashfully, they sort of startle into motion, looking rather alarmed, and he has to shake his head and tell them he's fine, it's silly, but he didn't expect this.

"Oh, Yuuri," Chris sighs mournfully. "What ever would we do without your lovely little head around here?"

"I assume you'll be having Nikiforov fly you out," Otabek says.

Wherein lies Yuuri's new problem—finding out whether or not Victor would want to accompany him to see his family in the first place.

"I hope so," Yuuri says, clasping his hands together at his front and rocking up and down on the balls of his feet. He feels buoyant just thinking about seeing his family again, this time with someone like Victor in tow. "I guess I'll go ask him right now."

"Bonne chance, chéri," Chris calls as Yuuri spins on his heel to leave. To his dismay he swears he hears Otabek rumbling to Chris something along the lines of ' _that Victor boy_ ' and ' _bad influence_ , _'_ and he almost trips over himself out in the corridor.

 

*

 

"I don't understand why he thought that was a significant request," Otabek tells Chris after Katsuki has pranced, like a little lamb, out of his office.

"He's shy," Chris says, inspecting his fingernails.

"His job security is better than mine," Otabek says frankly. "It's better than _yours_."

"Speak for yourself. You're just a dentist."

Otabek sniffs. "I never got kicked out of my place by my own first officer," he mutters, to which Chris very maturely responds by kicking half the shit off his desk.

 

*

 

In the hangar when Victor hears his footsteps approaching, he tosses his hair out of his face and grins, only to deflate dramatically when he sees who it actually is.

"Oh, it's you," Victor says with a heavy sigh as Yuuri wraps his arms around Victor's waist and buries his face between his shoulder blades. "I thought it might be Chris."

"Don't even joke about that," Yuuri mumbles against his shirt. When he doesn't get a response, he moves to tuck his head in the crook of Victor's shoulder, only to recoil in horror once he feels it's all slick with sweat. A step back, and Yuuri realizes sweat is actually dripping down the side of Victor's neck, glistening on the decidedly adequate muscles of his forearms as Victor sets down a wrench, leaning heavily on the edge of _Lutetia's_ hull.

Yuuri takes a shine to all this immediately; whatever it is Victor's doing, it seems mouthwateringly competent.

He takes a step back, and cocks his head to get a better look at the steaming hot guts of _Lutetia's_ inner machinery. "Are you busy right now?"

Victor dusts his hands off on his jeans and, oh God, lifts his grimy t-shirt to wipe at the dirt on his face before peering over his shoulder to lift an eyebrow at Yuuri. Minx. "I can make time," he says, an octave lower than usual, because he obviously thinks it's the smelling like engine oil that makes him James Dean, when in actuality it's the painstakingly perfect hair and the pout, the kissing boys until their _pour homme_ cologne rubs off on him. It's calculable but it's also cute, and it'll keep working until Victor runs out of non-tinted lip gloss.

"I don't know, this looks important," Yuuri says, flashing Victor a look of amusement. He gives Victor's bicep a pat. Oh how Yuuri loves him, his rough, tough lover boy. "Why don't I step inside while you finish up?"

"Walkway's down." Victor turns back towards the engine. "Help yourself."

To what, Yuuri wonders, already headed inside, glancing around. _Lutetia's_ been recently emptied, and there are even less boxes in here than there were before.

From time to time he wonders what ever became of those heels he got for Victor, amongst other things. He never gets to see them. Victor's taken to wandering around the ship in whatever, really, which Yuuri hopes means he's settled in, as opposed to given up.

Yuuri sits himself down on the mattress and stretches his feet out in front of him, patiently waiting. He thought he'd feel more nervous. Tonight is a pivoting point. Yuuri overheats when he realizes that in an hour or so he'll know if Victor would maybe like to go home with him and stay a little while. He plucks at the hem of his shirt and tucks his feet under himself. Hopefully Victor doesn't make him wait too long. The hangar's perennially cold air slips in through the open door in the cockpit, glides over the diamond plate floor and makes Yuuri shiver.

When Victor steps in only several moments later, he coos at the sight of Yuuri curling in on himself with a flimsy blanket wrapped around himself. "Oh darling," he sighs, all traces of previous bravado gone as he gets down on his hands on knees to crawl towards Yuuri, "I've left you alone for too long."

In a rustle of motion Victor suddenly has him lying back on the mattress, caging him in with his hands planted on either side of Yuuri's head. He tears the blanket away from Yuuri and tosses it somewhere out of sight, and Yuuri can only make a vaguely affronted noise before Victor is pressing their bodies together. Which seems strange for as long as Victor keeps still and quiet as he does, his head sinking to fill the empty space next to Yuuri's neck, and then Yuuri sighs against him, reveling in Victor's warmth melting sweetly into him.

For a breath or two Yuuri gets to cherish how nice the pressure is, how it leaves no room for modesty, until Victor rolls off to his side and insists on stealing Yuuri's hand to press it against his own warmed-up cheek like it's his own personal icepack. Yuuri tolerates this for as long as he can bear to be without all of Victor's body heat—meaning a minute comes and goes before Victor is rudely interrupted by Yuuri hooking his leg over Victor's waist and drawing him closer.

"Hey," says Yuuri, probably overly fond and smiling too much. Victor looks over at him expectantly. For a moment Yuuri goes so intolerably soft that he forgets why he's here. "You look good."

Even before he says it he knows it doesn't quite sound how it's meant to. What he means is this morning Victor looked waifish and pale, and a fretful part of Yuuri had fear of something worse than Victor's professed conditions of common flu and heartsickness, but tonight Victor's colors have come back in radiant full force, from his peaches and cream complexion to the sweet fullness of his soft mouth. Yuuri's seen what a little bit of fat can do for patients recovering in the medbay, and it's always soothing, but for Victor the transformation is really like no other. It took him months to figure out that the lines beneath his eyes weren't a byproduct of the drinking, but actual dimples.

Victor's completely unconcerned with what Yuuri means. He warms up to the face value of what's been said.

"And you," Victor murmurs, glancing down. At which point Yuuri realizes he never changed out of his stupid egg pajamas, so obviously what comes next is Victor snorts, "Very sexy."

"Stop it," Yuuri mutters, gone entirely sullen while Victor tries to contain his laughter. "They're meant to cheer people up. Don't make fun of me."

"When have I ever!" Victor protests, but he's laughing now. Yuuri's sick of him, decidedly doesn't want him anywhere near his mother, only when he tries to crawl away Victor curls his arms around his middle and naturally heaves him back so Yuuri ends up astride Victor's lap. Which. Could be worse. This way he can leech Victor's heat without deigning to look at him.

Like that, with his back lined up against the warm, broad plane of Victor's chest, Yuuri can feel everything—each breath that he takes, his adam's apple bobbing, his throat hot against Yuuri's nape as Victor leans down to bother him again, mouthing at the skin by his ear. The laughter melts away, and Victor moves deliberately, leisurely, curls his fingers around Yuuri's waist and takes an earlobe into his mouth.

"Ah—" Yuuri twitches when Victor goes to suck a kiss into his neck, and then another, and another, humming contentedly while Yuuri squirms in his lap "—God, Victor, _enough_ ," he pants, flushed already.

"Tch, forgive me," Victor says, pressing a brief kiss to Yuuri's cheek. " _Muah_. There. I'll stop."

Yuuri almost keels over in exasperation. He hears Victor cluck in feigned disapproval when he closes his eyes and shuffles around to hide his face in Victor's shirt. What a jerk. He didn't come down here for this kind of abuse. His heart is still fluttering. He sinks a little further into Victor's chest, where Victor can't ravish him, can only card his fingers through Yuuri's hair while Yuuri sniffles in his shirt.

"Oh, angel, stop it," Victor says, petting the back of Yuuri's head. "I'm not making fun anymore. I think it's cute."

Yuuri doesn't care about the scrubs anymore. He knows they're cute. That's why he wears them. They make him look milky and docile. Nobody yells at him when he's wearing breakfast scrubs. Nobody's capable.

"I'm surprised at you," Victor tells him frankly when Yuuri still doesn't appear to forgive him. "I've said much worse to you before."

It's not that, Yuuri thinks. It's how overwhelming it seems that he's meant to ask Victor to take him home in a few days. Maybe he should put it off. The timing doesn't feel right.

"Tell me what you want to hear," Victor pleads. He's rubbing his hand comfortingly up and down Yuuri's back, lingering at the base of his spine, still babbling when Yuuri surfaces again, the tip of his nose hovering just particles away from Victor's.

"…come now love, I really think you're such a dream—ah! There you are," Victor says triumphantly, like Yuuri's actually been hiding somewhere Victor can't find him and not just sulking against his chest. "You're even more beautiful than I remember," he declares. "Now tell me why you're really upset."

At first Yuuri doesn't say anything.

"I'm not upset," Yuuri says. When he gets like this he feels like an oyster with a pearl secreted away inside. "I came to see you because…" He rubs the back of his neck. "Because I want you to, um."

"You want me to…?" Victor bats his eyelashes several times, perplexed, like he's lost the thread of what they're talking about.

Yuuri pinches the bridge of his nose. Where are his glasses? He must have left them in the cabin. Victor's face is a little blurry and his edges are hazy, palely glowing. "Nothing. Forget it. Do you…do you ever think about going back to Russia? For your family, I mean."

"No," Victor says primly. His expression is carefully blank.

"Okay," he says tentatively. "…I do. All the time. I wonder about my family back home. How they're doing."

The strained look on Victor's face makes Yuuri's stomach churn. He alters course slightly.

"So I'm going to take some time off to see them. I'll be going away for a month, and then I'll have time to think about my contract."

Caught up in not wanting to cross such a delicate line, Yuuri neglects to mention that he's already decided to renew his contract. It doesn't occur to him, in that moment, just how much of a difference that makes.

In front of him, Victor swallows thickly and drags his hand down his face. He must think Yuuri is breaking up with him.

This isn't the conversation Yuuri thought he was having.

Yuuri figures there's something wrong with him because he doesn't try to tell Victor otherwise. He watches it all unfold in front of him—the flutter of Victor's eyelashes under siege of tears, the childlike tremble of his lips, the curve of his hand against his furrowed brow. A part of him believes Victor would never tell him this in any other way.

This feels voyeuristic—like peering through an eyelet into a different timeline. One where he never managed to fall in love with Victor all over again.

Victor cries. His tears drip off his lashes and into his lap. "Oh," he says, very quietly. He wipes delicately at the corner of his eye. "You're…oh. My goodness."

"Are you okay?" Yuuri asks gingerly, knowing very well the answer by now.

Victor stares at him, mouth slightly agape. "Of course I'm not okay," he says.

When Yuuri lifts his hand to tuck Victor's hair behind his ear, Victor grabs his wrist and says, "Darling, stop it. Please. I don't…did I do something wrong?"

 _Oh_ , Yuuri thinks, fumbling, because it makes sense that Victor would immediately think that. To him this must seem like more of a departure than a detour, particularly since Yuuri's been ushering him shamelessly all throughout galaxy without so much as a please-and-thank-you. He's not blind to the implications, but the sheer romantic mania of Russian literature shines through in everything Victor does and says, and he's been completely hopeless ever since Yuuri dragged him bridal-style through glittering deep space and laid him down in bed like Tchaikovsky's Aurora.

After pulling a move like that, it's no wonder at all why Victor's eyes go all misty when Yuuri does something so totally mundane as gently touch his throat during a standard checkup.

So it must seem imprudent and selfish of him, to have spent all these months treating Victor like his intended, and then distress him so much by running off for no apparent reason.

Yuuri tries to kiss him again, after a heartbeat, and this time Victor lets him. It's sweet and chaste and rather virginal, and the two of them pause for a tentative moment, testing the waters, until Victor slides his arms around Yuuri's neck and kisses him slow and warm, cradling Yuuri's head in his hands like something fragile. His face is still tear-stained. Each breath he takes is shuddery, and when he cries like this his chest seizes with it.

Yuuri pulls back, feeling mawkish, and starts to yawn. It's late. Normally he would've been in bed hours ago.

"Can we talk about this tomorrow?" Victor asks, limned in the soft glow of distant stars. "I'll let you sleep right away. Just…stay here with me."

Victor's never managed to look so stunningly unattractive before. He's tear-sticky and still sniffling, covered in grease, smelling like sweat. It's not cute and it's not endearing. There's no way Victor will fall asleep anytime soon, not in jeans, not when his heart's such a wreck, and it's only because Yuuri adores him so much that he says, "If that's what you want."

Victor closes his eyes.

"…I've never seen you cry so much," says Yuuri obliquely. Let him ruin Victor now and nurse him back to health another time.

"Would you lie down and be quiet," Victor grits out, delightfully aggravated, hiding his eyes behind back of his hand. "I hate you. You're the worst thing that ever happened to me. I hope you feel terrible."

"I suppose you can't wait to get rid of me," says Yuuri lightly.

"Don't laugh at me," Victor hisses. He rubs his eyes dry and sniffles. Yuuri takes his hand and pecks it.

 _Poor thing_ , he thinks, when Victor's chin wrinkles and he dips his head again. Another kiss, this time on the warm palm of Victor's hand.

"Try to sleep," he says. "This will all be over soon."

 

*

 

But Victor is oblivious to his meaning, so it's very many hours that Victor stays awake while Yuuri slumbers by his side.

Yuuri knows because he wakes from time to time and the blanket stays wrapped around him. There's no arm slung over his hip, no warm hand on his belly. None of Victor's soft, drowsy mumbling. He feels childish for expecting all these things, even more so for wanting them. His brain feels like cotton candy. He's struck by a pulse of longing when he crooks his head and sees Victor with his hands pillowed beneath his head, staring vacuously at the ceiling where he's tacked on more of those glow-in-the-dark wax stars.

He slides his bare foot up Victor's calf, then pretends to be sound asleep when Victor's gaze flits over to him. He can't say for certain if it works. Victor rolls onto his side, until they're practically chest-to-chest, and Yuuri hears Victor's slow, deep breaths, and feels fingertips delicately pinning his hair away from his forehead.

"You have no clue, do you," Victor murmurs, impossibly soft. He's always saying things like that. Like Yuuri is some quiet, black house cat, sitting by and watching the world in front of him with great disregard. One of these days Yuuri would like to know what it is Victor thinks he's so oblivious to.

Victor sighs, "What I'd do for you."

See, Yuuri used to say this kind of thing all the time to his dog. To stray cats who ate corn out of his hand. With real people it's different.

He doesn't open his eyes but he puts his arm around Victor's neck and mumbles, "Come with me."

He feels Victor freeze. Hears him swallow.

"What?" Victor blurts, slightly louder than before.

"Come with me to Japan," Yuuri repeats. Better to put his mind to rest now than deal with Victor tomorrow when he'll be torn between ardent affection and scathing ruthlessness.

" _What?_ " Victor raises his voice. "What are you—" he erupts into motion, propping himself up and violently jostling Yuuri's shoulder "—my God, Yuuri, get up!"

Yuuri groans and screws his eyes shut. The lights are on now, interrupting the hangar's perpetual nighttime and dazzling him.

"Were you dreaming just now?" Victor demands, incensed and possibly skirting hysteria. "Tell me again what you just said."

"I said you can come with me to Japan," Yuuri grumbles, rubbing his eyes and broadcasting general dissatisfaction. This is what he gets for luring Victor out like this. "Only if you want," he adds. Victor glares at him, so he tries to offset the mood a bit. "Hasetsu is beautiful in spring."

" _Bozhe moi_ , Yuuri." Victor seems to crumple all over again, like a tissue under tapwater. He's crying, making the most sorrowful face, closing his eyes and wiping at the tears spilling over. "You idiot," he says quietly, lips wobbling.

"What?" Yuuri narrows his eyes. He sits up slowly. "You don't have to come if it's so terrible."

"Stop saying that." Victor seems to gather himself marginally, letting his hands drop uselessly to his side and looking down at Yuuri with an air of chastisement. "Of course I want to come. I can't believe you made me think you were leaving me."

"It was only for a month," Yuuri says grimly. "And negotiating my new contract afterwards."

"A month apart." Victor sniffs. "I'd rather die."

"Stop it," Yuuri says, exasperated. He'll need an era of rest to recover from this. From Victor. He lets his head loll uselessly against Victor's shoulder. "Don't say things like that."

In lieu of response Victor only makes a thoughtful noise. He lifts his hand to Yuuri's nape and strokes the sensitive skin there, pressing his lips to Yuuri's hair.

It'd be hopeless now, Yuuri knows, to try and extract himself and head back to sleep; Victor's mumbling nonsense to him, bubbling over with adoration as he holds Yuuri's face still and peppers him with kisses.

As Victor dotes on him, Yuuri feels like it's a blessing, being loved in this way, by someone this divine. It must be some sort of mistake. Like Victor is a drop of nectar caught in Yuuri's silk web, by all means Yuuri's rightful spoils of war, and Yuuri doesn't know why he's here or what to do with him—he only knows that Victor belongs to him. That if better creatures want him, then they'll have to fight for him, and the universe will conspire against them as it once did Yuuri, almost seven years ago.

He knows this.

("Look what you do to me," Victor complains, sick and fed up with crying by this point—while Yuuri admires the flush on his cheeks, deep as a rose.)

He is absolutely certain of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know babies start crawling at like 6 months and it's only been idk, a day since isabellas kid was born—listen. it's fine. she's just precocious. but if you want you could pretend you didnt read about yuuri katsuki holding a tiny baby and murmuring softly to her and letting her drool on his egg-themed scrubs. you might really hate all of those things. it's up to you.
> 
> apologies for probably unreasonable depictions of what medical professionals wear in the workplace. my excuse as usual is that it's cute/avant-garde. consider yuuri a trailblazer. i am also forced to apologise for doting like an absolute pervert on the way victor cries for what is probably the sixth time in this fic alone.
> 
> thank you all so much for reading and leaving such lovely messages for me whenever i managed to update. i'm glad i could finish this and i sincerely hope this ending is satisfying—i planned on a 12th chapter/epilogue but i am getting antsy and would like to focus on other projects. just…know that it is treacherously sweet and yuuri's family have not disowned him/literally buried him after 7 years without contact, and also hiroko recognizes and greets vicchan before she does yuuri, because she honestly does not recognise the brick house of a man who looks so much healthier and happier than her post-breakup son who left earth so many years ago. yeah
> 
> please feel free to reach out to me on [twitter](http://twitter.com/hyperfruit) and [tumblr](http://badkisser.tumblr.com). i am always hemorrhaging love


End file.
